Cowboy
State Daily
The
Converse County Oil and Gas Project was celebrated by many in Wyoming back in
2020, when it appeared the Bureau of Land Management was done with its
environmental assessment and ready to allow 5,000 new oil and natural gas wells
within the 1.5 million-acre project area. This week, the Petroleum
Association of Wyoming released a statement pointing out how after nearly a
decade of study, the project is still hung up in court.
“Clearly,
change is needed,” the group said in response to news the U.S. Department of
the Interior is overhauling its permitting system to allow more drilling on
public land.
“The new
permitting procedures will take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at
most,” according to a Wednesday statement from the Department of the Interior,
which oversees the BLM.
“Projects
analyzed in an environmental assessment, normally taking up to one year, will
now be reviewed within approximately 14 days,” the new guideline states.
Full
environmental impact statements, like the one done for proposed drilling in
Converse County, “will be reviewed in roughly 28 days.”Response to the revised
approach to environmental reviews for oil and gas drilling has been
divided.
“We
appreciate the administration’s efforts to evaluate the permitting process and
urge Congress to pass comprehensive permitting reform,” is how PAW greeted the
news, while conservation groups sounded an alarm about ignoring the National
Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).
“This
directive, based on an emergency that doesn’t exist, silences the public and
guts NEPA’s core purpose — informed decision making,” said Tracy Stone-Manning,
president of The Wilderness Society. The DOI’s recent directive follows
other recent announcements from the BLM about lifting regulatory barriers for
2,147 leases covering about 2.25 million acres in Wyoming. The first test
case for how the new DOI and BLM policies will play out on the ground in
Wyoming may come through the 37 oil and gas parcels, totaling 45,178 acres, now
up for public comment through the BLM. The comment period ends May 15, and
the parcel leases are slated for sale in September.
“The BLM
will use input from the public to help complete its review of each parcel,”
according to a recent statement from the agency. “The BLM reviews applications
for permits to drill, posts them for public review, conducts an environmental
analysis and coordinates with state partners and stakeholders.” That will all
need to happen in under 28 days, according to the new rules.
Chill
Setting In? Beyond industry advocates and
environmental groups, business journalists and analysts watching the current
acceleration in the permitting process are uncertain where the oil and gas
markets are headed if there’s a sudden increase in production.
“With crude
oil global supply at or near par to demand, some oil producers fear that the
market will become oversupplied,” reported Dennis Kissler on Thursday in a
column for Hart Energy, an oil and gas industry publication.
The
headline for the piece was, “Producers Might Want to Chill, Baby, Chill,” as it
repeated a play on words that appeared in the industry press at the start of
2025. Kissler wondered if tariffs and a
weakening stock market could push demand for oil lower, while the Trump
administration’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” policies push supply higher.Commodity
traders pegged the price of crude oil at $63.17 a barrel as markets closed
Friday. Also Friday, Amplify Energy Corp.
and Juniper Capital Advisors announced they are terminating a plan to drill for
oil in Wyoming “in light of the extraordinary volatility in the market.” In January, the
two companies reported in a joint statement they were working together to
develop, “substantial oil-weighted producing assets and significant leasehold
interests in the DJ and Powder River Basins.”
“Amplify
Energy Corp. is an independent oil and natural gas company engaged in the
acquisition, development, exploitation and production of oil and natural gas
properties,” the statement says, and for now, it’s pushing pause on work in
Wyoming.
Industry Survey
This month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted
the price of oil will continue to dip by about 1.5% over the next year. In its April 11 energy survey, the Tenth Federal
Reserve District — which includes Wyoming — found the oil producing firms
surveyed reported that oil prices needed to be on average $65 per barrel for
drilling to be profitable, and $85 per barrel for a substantial increase in
drilling to occur.With natural gas
prices, they needed to be $3.80 per million Btu for drilling to be profitable
on average, and $5.10 per million Btu for drilling to increase substantially.On Friday, the closing price of natural gas was $2.94
per million Btu.
The federal reserve survey included selected quotes from contacts
in the oil and gas industry. Some tried to decipher the current trends in oil
and gas prices, observing, “Softening of the economy in near term leads to
lower energy prices,” and “High demand and inflation pushing up development
costs.”