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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Padre Island National Seashore isn't the only wildlife refuge where new drilling rigs are becoming part of the scenery.
Nov 27, 2002 | Conservationists are lamenting that drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will likely be reintroduced before the Republican-controlled Congress next year as part of the Bush administration's energy plan. But here in the lower 48 states new drilling of federally managed lands has already begun on Padre Island National Seashore. It needed no congressional approval, and is the likely precursor to accelerated plans for new drilling and mining efforts in other parks.
On Nov. 8, the National Park Service approved the drilling of two new natural gas wells in the protected sands near Corpus Christi, Texas. Candidates to be next on the list, according to Jim Woods, chief of the mineral operations branch of the service's geological resources division, include Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, Lake Meredith National Recreation Area in Fritch, Texas, and Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve in New Orleans, La.
There are already 701 active oil and gas wells in 13 different parks operated by the National Park Service, says Woods.
Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Kentucky and Tennessee has 314 active wells alone. Sixteen new wells have been drilled within just the last five years in parks such as Big Thicket National Preserve in Beaumont, Texas, and Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Fla.
In contrast to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in these national parks an act of Congress is not required to get drilling approved. The Department of the Interior can simply authorize new projects under the authority of the Park Service.
That's because the federal government doesn't actually own the mineral riches in the ground beneath many of its national parks and recreation areas.
In more than half of the lands managed by the National Park Service, mineral rights, from oil to gold, are held separately from the surface land rights. The Park Service has the delicate task of permitting the commercial extraction of resources while at the same time minimizing its impact on land, wildlife and park-goers' ability to experience the unspoiled outdoors.
Of the 386 "units" operated by the National Park Service, including parks, recreation areas and seashores, the mineral rights of some 200 belong to private parties or local state governments, not the federal government, according to David Barna, chief of public affairs for the Park Service.
"In the best of all possible worlds, we would buy out these rights. These are special places," says Carol McCoy, chief of the policy and regulations branch in the geologic resources division of the Park Service. "But it costs money."
