Nick Snow
Washington Editor
The US Bureau of Land Management's field office in Vernal, Utah, intends to prepare an air-quality supplement to the Greater Natural Buttes Gas Development Project draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) it announced on Oct. 19.
It said BLM, in conjunction with the US Environmental Protection Agency, has determined that an air quality supplement is needed to address recent air quality monitoring results that were not available as the DEIS was being prepared.
Starting last fall, monitors were placed in the Uinta basin as part of a settlement agreement Anadarko Petroleum Corp. reached with EPA, according to Leonard Herr, an air resource specialist in BLM's Utah state office in Salt Lake City.
"The limited monitoring which had been done in Utah previously hadn't shown very much of an ozone issue," he told OGJ by phone on Oct. 21. "But these monitors found some potentially serious levels during the wintertime. It was very significant new information."
BLM also said in its announcement that it also intends to model potential air quality impacts in light of recent changes to National Ambient Air Quality Standards for 1-hr nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions, which occurred after the project's DEIS was completed.
Additional modeling
The actual DEIS was not released until after these new regulations were promulgated, but its analysis was completed well before, Herr noted. "Considering we are opening this up to do some more air work, we felt it was appropriate to do more modeling, particularly with smaller, near-to-the-ground sources such as drilling rigs to address those new standards," he said. "It won't be extensive modeling, but it will be important."
Kerr-McGee Oil Gas Onshore LP, an Anadarko subsidiary, originally proposed a 162,911-acre development with up to 3,675 new wells over 10 years in an existing producing area.
"We don't plan to do the ozone modeling associated with this project because it's very extensive and can be quite expensive," Herr said. "The potential ozone impacts will be addressed through mitigation and adaptive management." That involves considering other rules which might be necessary as new regulations emerge, such as a new ozone standard from EPA after November elections, he explained.
"It's a dynamic situation. As we get new information, it could inform what controls might be required in the future," Herr said.
He told OGJ on Nov. 1 that BLM plans to issue a public notice in two steps: initially in a newspaper of general circulation in another few days, announcing that it is doing the supplemental analysis; and then a formal announcement in the Federal Register seeking public comment in a few months once the analysis is done.
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