The US Bureau of Land Management has prepared a preliminary environmental assessment analyzing potential impacts of offering five parcels totaling more than 6,350 acres in Payette County, Ida., east of Boise.
Comments on the preliminary EA, supporting documents, and an accompanying unsigned Finding of No Significant Impact for a tentative Apr. 15 protective lease sale will be accepted through Jan. 22, BLM’s Four Rivers Field Office in Boise said.
It is considering offering 997 acres on which BLM has surface jurisdiction and 5,355 acres of subsurface federal mineral holdings beneath privately owned surface land.
The Dec. 22 notice said the lease sale is necessary to protect the federal mineral resource from uncompensated drainage in and to the north and east of Willow field 5 miles east of Payette, Ida. Uncompensated drainage means federal mineral resources are being produced by adjacent wells without paying royalties required under the Mineral Leasing Act as amended, it explained.
Houston-based Alta Mesa Services Inc., which operates onshore primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, plans to drill four wells on private land, two of which would drain minerals reserved to the US, BLM said.
It prepared the preliminary EA under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to determine if leasing is appropriate and, if so, what stipulations should be associated with granting the lessee exclusive rights to develop federal oil and gas resources without surface disturbance.
Additional site-specific NEPA analyses would be required if the lessee wanted to drill into federal lands, the notice indicated.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].