The Colorado office of the Bureau of Land Management is recommending that the agency move forward with a master leasing plan to guide oil and gas development in eastern Montezuma and western La Plata counties.
The lead public-affairs specialist for the BLM state office, Jayson Barangan, tells KSJD the state will submit a proposal to the agency’s national office for the Tres Rios Field Office to prepare the MLP. If the plan moves forward, Barangan says its scope and timing will depend on resources and funding. The state office is proposing some refinements to the originally proposed boundaries of the MLP area. From November 2015 to March 2016, a sub-group of an advisory group to the BLM called the Southwest RAC took public input on the proposed MLP. More than 300 people attended and more than 350 pages of comments were received. However, the sub-group and RAC were not able to reach a consensus on the proposal. The Montezuma County commissioners opposed the MLP, and Commission Chair Larry Don Suckla tells KSJD it will be redundant to the already existing Tres Rios resource management plan, which he said took seven years and $7 million to prepare. He says if the MLP takes as much time and money, that will be $14 million spent to pile “regulations on top of regulations.”
