By Brandt Mannchen

On February 11, 2019, the Houston Regional Group and Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club (Sierra Club) had a conference call with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the U.S. Forest Service (FS), National Forests and Grasslands in Texas (NFGT), about the status of the NFGT oil/gas leasing environmental impact statement (OGLEIS).

The CBD asked the FS about how the OGLEIS would be integrated into the NFGT Forest Plan.  There will have to be a Forest Plan amendment for the OGLEIS.  The Notification of Intent (NOI) which begins scoping for the OGLEIS, will probably come in May.  

The FS said there is no “hard and fast” deadline for completing the OGLEIS but the general expectation was it would be complete 18 months after the NOI is published.  The OGLEIS will be prepared by a contractor who is experienced, has worked for the FS, knows about oil/gas, and this is the largest National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) contract that the NFGT has seen in the FS.

The attention on the OGLEIS is focused on air quality and climate change.  The FS wants the NFGT OGLEIS to be a model analysis.  The FS wants to do a good job on air quality and climate change.  Dr. Cindy West runs the FS Washington Office of Climate and Sustainability.  She is an academician, air quality modeler, and has other air quality modelers working for her.  The FS has hired a PHD intern to work on a hybrid model that is somewhere between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) climate change models.  The FS does not have all data needed so it will have to make some assumptions.  The FS wants to make sure that the NFGT OGLEIS is done right.  Then other National Forests can use the model and EIS and use them for their leasing decisions.

In July 2018 the FS had a workshop with BLM about how to share roles and responsibilities.  Another workshop occurred in December 2018 where the FS discussed the “need for change”, marked up maps which tell where not to lease, surface occupancy, etc.  The “need for change” that will be released to the public will have maps and tables that show data to document there is a “need for change”.

The FS wants to give the public at least 4 to 6 weeks to read the NOI before having public meetings.  The FS stated that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Railroad Commission must provide thresholds for the model.  The NFGT has never conducted an analysis with air pollution non-attainment areas.  The OGLEIS has two non-attainment areas, Houston and Dallas, and may have a third in San Antonio.

The BLM has completed the “reasonably foreseeable development scenario” (RFDS) for NFGT oil/gas development.  The RFDS is needed for the “purpose and need” statement in the NOI and by national agreement the BLM does this analysis.  The RFDS is speculative and like a worst-case scenario.  It projects a lot of oil/gas development.  The FS will project the climate change that has happened now and will occur in the future due to oil/gas development in the NFGT and apply the environmental impacts from that climate change on management of the NFGT as cumulative effects.

The Sierra Club told the FS that an important issue is how private minerals in the NFGT and oil/gas development just outside the NFGT will be addressed with NFGT oil/gas development on federal lands.  There are access roads, pipelines, and other actions where private minerals have an impact on the NFGT.  CBD has seen cases where opening up federal oil/gas lands acts as an incentive to open up private oil/gas lands.

CBO asked if there would be a “no leasing alternative”, different from a “no action alternative” (which allows for oil/gas development because that is the current NFGT policy).  The FS said it would consider a “no leasing alternative” in its range of alternatives but does not know if that alternative will be dropped or advanced for NEPA analysis.  

The FS agreed it would introduce CBD and the Sierra Club to Dr. Cindy West and her staff at the Office of Climate and Sustainability.  The Sierra Club asked the FS if it ever had “independent peer review” of its documents.  The FS said Texas A&M geology and petroleum engineering had been contacted.  The Sierra Club said it preferred that any “peer review panel” be independent rather than made up of those who were already for oil/gas development.

The FS said there will be no new oil/gas leasing in the NFGT until there the OGLEIS is complete. This is the decision that the previous Forest Supervisor made when he said that the FS had not made its case in 2016 about leasing oil/gas in the NFGT.

Brandt Mannchen

March 2, 2019