Word: basins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Battle for the Basin...
Your item on extracting natural gas using coal-bed methane development in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, "Rocky Mountain Deep: The Next Drilling War" [NOTEBOOK, May 20], left some mistaken impressions. The Powder River Basin is not in the Rocky Mountains but is some distance from those scenic mountain peaks. And although the basin is home to wildlife, it is not exactly "pristine," having been a major energy-producing area for more than 20 years. Also, you implied that the impacts of drilling new methane wells are uniformly negative, overlooking the benefits of the clean, nonsaline water that is pumped...
...Environmental Protection Agency will issue a crucial report on a plan to extract natural gas from an area in the Rocky Mountains four times the size of the proposed Arctic refuge site. The Administration says 25 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas is buried in Wyoming's Powder River Basin--enough to supply the U.S. for a year and worth up to $46 billion to energy companies. The Administration wants to green-light the drilling of more than 35,000 new methane wells in the basin by November. But environmentalists, along with local ranchers, are waging a fierce fight against...
...project indefinitely, Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles, a former energy lobbyist, asked the EPA to reconsider. The agency's final evaluation is expected this week. But there is another roadblock: the Interior Department's own board of appeals has ruled that three leases in the basin were granted illegally because the environmental impact of drilling for methane had not been properly studied. Interior officials tell TIME that the lease problem is "surmountable" and the objections are "resolvable." If so, Bush would finally have his energy jackpot. But the price would be steep--new fodder for critics...
...benevolent effect on cranes. More accurate is the situation in the Amur River border region between Russia and China, where both countries are more than willing to sell their rich natural resources to the highest bidder?with dire consequences for the cranes that dwell in the Amur basin. Matthiessen would stop the course of such progress cold. Yet Russia is desperately poor and China faces serious population pressure. Is it even faintly realistic to expect them to turn off the flow of foreign investment to save a bird, however lovely? Matthiessen doesn't overly dwell on environmental realpolitik. Birds...