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Trump Administration Pushes For 5,000-Well Wyoming Oil And Gas Project
The Bureau of Land Management reports it’s found no significant new impacts to groundwater resources following additional analysis ordered by a federal court for the massive 5,000-well Converse County Oil and Gas Project.
The agency’s supplemental environmental review released Friday addresses concerns raised by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia regarding groundwater modeling for the project, which was approved in December 2020 under the first Trump administration.
The project authorizes up to 5,000 oil and gas wells across about 1.5 million acres in Converse County in eastern Wyoming.
According to the BLM, the project could generate between $18 billion and $28 billion in federal revenues and create roughly 8,000 jobs. The development covers mostly private surface lands with federal subsurface mineral rights.
“Today’s decision does not lift the court’s hold on the issuance of applications for permit to drill approvals in the project area that are based on the environmental impact statement for the project,” Friday’s announcement from the BLM states. “The agency will work with the Department of Justice and District Court to resume processing of applications for permits to drill based on the environmental impact statement in the project area as soon as possible.”
In other words, despite the court order, it appears the BLM and U.S. Department of Justice are working together to approve drilling permits that have been held up by litigation for years.
Initial response from Wyoming’s oil and gas industry is hopeful.
“BLM staff acted quickly to remedy the groundwater assessment for the Converse County Oil and Gas Project, and we appreciate their efforts,” Ryan McConnaughey, Petroleum Association of Wyoming vice president, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “BLM’s analysis is now in the hands of the court, and a quick resolution is critical to getting permits approved and workers back in the field.”
Gov. Mark Gordon also responded favorably Monday to the news.
“This is a step in the right direction from the BLM in allowing industry to do what they were approved to do back in 2020,” Gordon told Cowboy State Daily. “Hopefully, the judge quickly agrees that the erroneous data point has been corrected, and the project may resume.”
Legal Challenge
The additional BLM analysis stems from a September 2024 court ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Sheridan-based Powder River Basin Resource Council and Western Watersheds Project.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan found that the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by using allegedly flawed groundwater modeling.
As Cowboy State Daily reported in September, the dispute centers on a technical detail called “specific storage value,” which measures an aquifer’s capacity to release groundwater in response to oil field production.
BLM used a specific storage value of 0.001, citing a 2014 Powder River Basin report, but the EPA flagged the figure as too high, meaning it would substantially underestimate groundwater drawdown from oil and gas production.
Strong Opposition
At the time, Gov. Mark Gordon called Judge Chutkan’s ruling “an extreme overreaction to a calculation mistake made by the BLM,” telling Cowboy State Daily that “this unnecessary delay merely punishes Wyoming oil and gas companies when this error could be easily rectified.”
U.S. Sen. John Barrasso expressed similar frustration.
“It’s outrageous for a court today to threaten a project that creates thousands of Wyoming jobs,” he said at the time. “The oil and gas production that will result from this project are vital to Converse County, Wyoming’s economy and America’s energy security.”
The original lawsuit challenged far more than just groundwater modeling. Documents show environmental groups raised concerns about BLM’s proposal to eliminate longstanding protections for raptors and other migratory birds in the project area.
The Powder River Basin Resource Council, which has about 2,000 members in the region, strongly opposed BLM’s plan to waive timing limitation stipulations that protect non-eagle raptor nests during critical breeding periods. The organization argued in July 2019 comments that with 1,283 documented raptor nests in the project area, the protections were scientifically justified and legally required under federal law.
“BLM’s current timing stipulations are justified by scientific studies and research that shows that human disturbance and noise in close proximity to nesting activities is likely to lead to the abandonment of the nest or a failure to successfully raise fledglings,” the group wrote.
The environmental organization criticized BLM for failing to provide scientific justification for rolling back the lease stipulations, calling the proposal “a dangerous scientific experiment — one that is likely to fail.”
Year-Round Development
Meanwhile, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. strongly supported the BLM’s proposal for year-round drilling operations.
In detailed July 2019 comments, Anadarko argued that year-round development is critical for the project’s economic viability. The company highlighted that their analysis showed significantly fewer environmental impacts than BLM had projected, citing more recent raptor nest monitoring data from 2016-2018.
Anadarko’s nest monitoring data revealed that only 19% of surveyed nests were actually active, substantially lower than the 50% the BLM used in its impact analysis.
The company also detailed what it characterized as environmental benefits of year-round drilling, including reduced surface disturbance, fewer drilling rig moves resulting in less vehicular traffic and lower mobile air emissions.
Local Support
The city of Douglas has voiced strong support for the project, backing year-round development options.
City Administrator Jonathan Teichert wrote during the 2019 comment period that “continued access to the mineral estate is important to the state of Wyoming, Converse County and the city of Douglas. Year-round development is critical to the project’s sustained economic viability.”
Douglas officials argued that seasonal restrictions would create adverse environmental impacts by “concentrating development during six short months, thus increasing the intensity of the impacts.”
The city noted that most raptor nests within the project boundary were already inactive or abandoned, “without any cause of disturbance from O&G activity.”
The Petroleum Association of Wyoming warned that restrictions on year-round drilling would create “a myriad of impacts including larger pad size, deferred interim reclamation, swings in economic activity and increased vehicle traffic and emissions associated with additional rig mobilizations.”
Massive Scale
Court documents show the project area spans 2,344 square miles, roughly the size of Delaware, in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. The development is expected to include 1,500 well pads, 2,900 miles of pipeline and nearly 2,000 miles of access roads over a 10-year period.
Environmental groups detailed BLM’s own projections showing the project could cause violations of National Ambient Air Quality Standards and affect visibility in national parks including Badlands and Wind Cave in South Dakota.
The court order halted further approvals of drilling permits based on the project’s environmental impact statement. Friday’s announcement indicates the BLM under the second Trump administration is poised to push the project forward.
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
