The Sierra Club and allies have successfully negotiated the relinquishment of the existing oil and gas leases on top of the Roan Plateau, a beautiful wilderness area in western Colorado.
The Sierra Club has been fighting oil and gas development on the Roan Plateau since the early 2000s, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) first released a management plan for the Roan Plateau that allowed drilling atop the plateau, despite strong public opposition. The Sierra Club Colorado Chapter’s Roaring Fork Group activists made their opposition known at every opportunity, commenting in public hearings about the plan, writing letters to the editors of local papers as well as their legislators to urge for protection of the plateau, and working closely with the “Save the Roan” coalition on media campaigns and lobbying. Sierra Club filed a lawsuit to challenge BLM’s management plan, resulting in a settlement that required BLM to cancel all but two of the 19 leases on top of the plateau. Sierra Club also filed a lawsuit challenging BLM’s inadequate air quality analysis for drilling projects that are located near (but not on) the plateau, which resulted in a settlement requiring BLM to conduct new air quality analyses for thousands of wells and establish a tracking system for approved drilling permit applications in the area.
Upon reaching the first settlement with BLM to cancel most of the leases on the plateau, Sierra Club also entered into an agreement with the company that owned the remaining two leases that required the company to pay $500,000 to establish a conservation fund to restore habitat around the plateau and mitigate oil and gas drilling impacts. The company and its successors never fulfilled that obligation, so Sierra Club and allies recently initiated negotiations with the company’s successors, seeking either to enforce the agreement, or preferably, to get them to relinquish their leases. The successors agreed to relinquish the leases, and at the end of March, BLM approved the two lease relinquishments, meaning that the public lands on top of the Roan Plateau are now free from oil and gas leases! This represents a major win in the Sierra Club’s decades-long fight to protect the Roan Plateau and other public lands from oil and gas drilling.
The Sierra Club and allies were represented by Earthjustice and Denver-based law firm Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow. Sierra Club Environmental Law Program Managing Attorney Eric Huber helped represent the Sierra Club in prior lawsuits challenging oil and gas drilling on the Roan Plateau.