Industry embeds its own in the BLM
by Tony Barboza
Mining and energy companies fund workers at land-management offices
Employees at the
Bureau of Land Management field office in Vernal, Utah, were up to
their ears in oil and gas drilling applications. So when an oil and
gas trade group approached office manager Bill Stringer last year
and offered to pay five consultants to help with the backlog, he
thought it was a good idea.
Stringer’s office had
380 backlogged applications for oil and gas permits last year. That
number is projected to grow to nearly 600 next year, with each
application taking up to 180 days to process.
The
so-called "hosted workers," who started in February, are employees
of SWCA Inc., an environmental consulting firm. The Independent
Petroleum Association of Mountain States pays the cost of their
salaries directly to the consulting firm, but they work in the
Vernal office alongside 90 regular BLM employees.
"This
is about finding a way to accomplish work without asking taxpayers
to throw money at it," says Stringer. "We’re not doing
anything that wouldn’t get done anyway, but we’re doing
it more effectively."
The arrangement may be legal, but
it is taking a beating from environmentalists. "This allows the
industry to take the reins in approving their own permits," says
Stephen Bloch, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness
Alliance.
Still, it’s not the first time outside
consultants have worked in BLM offices, and the controversial
practice is becoming more common as the agency’s workload
grows.
The first arrangement to raise eyebrows occurred
in 2002, when two employees of Nevada Land and Resource Company
worked in the BLM’s Ely and Carson City offices. The company,
which was negotiating land exchanges with the BLM, provided the
workers to do archaeological and real-estate-related tasks. Nevada
Sen. Harry Reid, D, objected, and the BLM put an end to the
arrangement several months later.
But that didn’t
stop the practice. Now, both the Battle Mountain and Winnemucca
field offices use industry-funded contractors. Jo Simpson, a
spokeswoman for the Nevada BLM, says the workers, from third-party
consulting firms, are paid by mining companies to do environmental
analysis for mining operations. Five other workers from local
governments and power utilities work in BLM offices in Las Vegas,
Carson City and Ely, on rights-of-way applications and land
inventory.
Over the past six years, the BLM has nearly
quadrupled the number of oil and gas drilling permits it grants
annually. It approved a record-setting 6,052 applications last
year. Despite increasing that for its oil and gas program budget by
over 50 percent since 2000, the agency can’t keep up with all
the requests.
Between 2001 and 2003, energy companies,
led by EnCana, pooled money to fund three workers to process
drilling applications in the Pinedale, Wyo., office. In 2002, the
Rawlins, Wyo., office used funds from a group of oil and gas
companies, including British Petroleum, to hire a former BLM
employee as a consultant.
In the Vernal area, oil and gas
operators were frustrated by a BLM office that was constantly
behind in processing their permit applications, says Andrew
Bremner, director of government affairs for the Independent
Petroleum Association of Mountain States. To resolve the problem,
they worked out the hosted worker program with the office:
"We’re just trying to help them along."
Stringer
points out that the hosted workers have no final decision-making
authority. And because they were hired through a third-party
consulting firm, he says, they are insulated from the companies
that fund them. For private consulting firms, though, completing
work in a way that delivers a permit to the company paying them
often makes the difference between getting a second contract or
not, says Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor.
"Most of the public would be shocked to find out how much of the
work we think of as fundamentally governmental is being performed
by private actors," says Freeman, who is writing a book about the
consequences of widespread government contracting. "It’s
especially troubling when those private actors themselves have an
interest in the outcome of the work they’re performing."
After getting a temporary increase in funding from
Washington in March, Stringer hired two of the contractors as
official employees, moving them onto the federal payroll.
In July, the BLM announced a new plan to ask oil and gas companies
to pay $4,000 for each drilling permit application, which could
allow the agency to hire more permanent employees. But a late
addition to the energy bill by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, will block
such fees for the next 10 years.
The writer is
an HCN intern.