DAN SMITHERMAN

Perspective

Last spring a Texas-based company, Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP), united our state in robust opposition to a proposal to drill three test wells in the Upper Hoback area of the Wyoming Range. Sportsmen, local property owners, Gov. Dave Freudenthal, outfitters and guides, steelworkers and gas field workers, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission and even the State Board of Tourism publicly opposed drilling in this back-country area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest -- about 19,000 in all said '"no!"

The question now is what part of "no" does Plains (PXP) not understand?

We said, "No, not here." Not in prime elk, mule deer, pronghorn and moose habitat. Not in an area used for migration and spring calving. Not here in the headwaters of the Hoback River, one of many streams in the Wyoming Range that still supports populations of wild trout. Not in one of the largest remaining forest roadless areas in the state. Not in this area nationally renown for its hunting, fishing, recreation and scenic beauty.

However, PXP didn't listen to Wyoming. Not only is it not listening, it's moving in the opposite direction, expanding their newest drilling proposal to 136 wells on 17 pads with 29 miles of new or improved road construction. If you can't picture a web of roads and pads laid over a 22-square-mile area of your national forest, then visit the area south of Pinedale to see what this area will look like in the future.

PXP claims that it will drill in an environmentally sensitive manner. This is a buzz word and oxymoron. Gas production and environmental sensitivity are mutually exclusive actions. At the end of the day, regardless of how it drills, this area will have lost wildlife habitat, suffered disrupted migrations, added miles of roads, dirtied the air, significantly increased heavy vehicle traffic, affected the everyday lives of local citizens and added light pollution in areas where none existed. This is what environmental sensitive results are.

I've been pondering why the company has ignored us so far, and I think the underlying problem is that the people who call the shots for PXP in Texas don't understand what the Wyoming Range means to the people of Wyoming yet. They can't see anything wrong about putting drill rigs in some of the best moose habitat in all of Wyoming, and they don't seem to be aware or care that their plans could ruin traditional livelihoods and make it impossible for local outfitters like Dustin Child to hand down the family business to his next of kin. In fact, their emphasis is not on environmental issues but the exploitation of oil and gas producing areas. Thus the intro on their Web site ,"PXP is an independent oil and gas company primarily engaged in the upstream activities of acquiring, developing, exploiting and producing oil and gas … ." I don't see many environmental concerns here.

It is easy to understand why they don't listen or care. PXP won't be around to breathe the spoiled air, miss the views of the Gros Ventres and Winds. The company won't have to look back at old photographs to remember the natural unspoiled natural beauty of this area. It won't have to deal with the socioeconomic impacts to our small towns and the prospects of losing a diversified economy based on hunting, tourism, recreation, and traditional agriculture, either.

Regardless of its knowledge of Wyoming, its people, and its mountains, PXP feels it has the right, no -- the obligation -- to develop a production gas field in the Wyoming Range that rivals the Jonah field in both scale and scope. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. The company will tell you that it is only 17 pads, only 136 wells and that it only will develop 400 acres. The gas industry told us the same thing about the Jonah Field, where wells now number in the thousands and the landscape is forever changed.

PXP employees like Steve Rush, vice president of governmental affairs, can point to the company's "pretty impressive track record in other sensitive areas" all they want. This isn't just any sensitive area, it's Wyoming's mountain range, and this latest proposal for development --130 wells or more, miles of road building, trucks and traffic, well flaring and drilling muds, tainted water, workers, compressor stations, completion rigs and pipelines and all the rest -- will change a multiple use landscape into a single use industrial gas field. AND you can bet that if it is successful here, then this is only the beginning.

The time has come for PXP to recognize that for the same reasons so many Wyoming citizens have rallied around the Wyoming Range, Sen. John Barrasso recently introduced legislation in Congress to protect this range. These reasons are also the same reasons why Plains' most recent proposal shouldn't be approved and why other alternatives must be examined.

It's time for PXP to do the right thing here. It's time for the company to collectively exhibit actions consistent with "environmental sensitive development" and sell or trade its leases rather than get involved in a long drawn-out fight with an ornery and stubborn bunch of folks who love the Wyoming Range just the way it is -- today.

Dan Smitherman is a retired Marine Officer, a former outfitter in the Wyoming Range, a current hunting and wilderness guide and lives in Bondurant.