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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Environmentalists and oil industry representatives faced off in federal court on Monday over oil drilling in the Mancos Shale near Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico.

A group of environmental organizations filed suit last March to force the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to conduct a new environmental impact study on the effects of oil production in the Mancos Shale near Chaco Canyon.

U.S. Judge James Browning began hearing arguments Monday about whether to impose a moratorium on all new oil permitting in the Mancos until the court case is resolved.

The Mancos, an oil-rich zone in the San Juan Basin, remained undeveloped until recently because oil companies could not profitably mine for hydrocarbons in the hard-rock shale where it’s encased. But in the last few years, modern techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have, for the first time, allowed industry to economically crack open the Mancos, encouraging Encana Corp. of Canada and WPX Energy of Oklahoma to drill about 150 wells since 2011.

BP America and ConocoPhillips are also interested in developing the Mancos, leading all four companies and the American Petroleum Institute to join the lawsuit in support of the BLM.

“Encana and WPX have drilled over 100 wells in the past four years, together investing over $1 billion in the Mancos, and now they’re being asked to stop,” John Shepherd, attorney for the operators, told Browning. “It would cause enormous harm to the companies if they had to stop at this point.”

But environmentalists say proximity to Chaco Canyon raises concerns about impact on natural resources, Native American communities living in the area and cultural and archaeological sites. They want the BLM to thoroughly study those impacts with public input before approving any new drilling permits.

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The agency is currently allowing production under a 12-year-old “resource management plan” that was based on environmental assessments made before modern horizontal drilling and fracking became widely deployed.

The BLM is doing a supplemental environmental study of the effects of modern drilling in the Mancos, but environmentalists want all new permitting to cease pending completion of that study. They also want an entirely new assessment, not a supplemental study that simply updates the BLM’s 2003 resource management plan.

“The BLM says it hasn’t analyzed this technology before and it says it needs to, but yet it continues to approve the technology to go forward with new drilling,” said Wild Earth Guardian attorney Samantha Ruscavage-Barz.

Browning, who last January struck down a fracking moratorium in Mora County, is expected to rule on the request to suspend BLM’s permitting process by mid-August. But if the request is granted, it could effectively cease activity in the Mancos for three or four years, at least until after the BLM’s current supplemental environmental review is completed.

That prospect prompted Gov. Susana Martinez to plead for U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewel to stand behind the BLM process in court, warning that a judicial ruling in favor of environmentalists could jeopardize production in the San Juan Basin.