Nevada’s Ruby Mountains targeted for oil leasing and the locals don’t like it

When Lisa Eriksen wants a break from town life she heads to the Ruby Mountains near Elko, a range that’s been called the Swiss Alps of Nevada.

Eriksen, who has a botany degree, relishes the range as an alpine oasis where she can find plants such as the meadow rue, a flowering plant that can’t survive in the desert that surrounds the Rubies.

“It is kind of a delicate little thing you find in the shade,” she said.

Lately, though, Eriksen fears the fragile beauty of the range is under attack by a proposal to issue leases for oil and gas drilling.

“To see oil rigs and such in the Rubies, that would crush me,” said Eriksen, of Elko. “It is my sanctuary.”

The lease request, which is in its earliest stage and under review by the U.S. Forest Service, covers 52,500 acres. It is the result of an expression of interest in oil and gas leases from a requester identified in documents as Ethan Murray, who did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails seeking an interview.

The land at the northern end is just west of Lamoille Canyon, an area known for scenic, glaciated terrain that sees an estimated 23,000 visitors annually who mostly arrive via Lamoille Canyon Road, a National Scenic Byway.

Further south the proposal seeks leases on both sides of Harrison Pass Road, a seasonal route that cuts through the heart of the range and offers views of the Ruby Valley and access to the Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge. It also calls for leases on land that includes creeks that provide habitat for the threatened Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, hunt units for the largest deer herd in Nevada and habitat for Greater Sage Grouse.

The sheer size of the proposal and its location in a range that’s beloved for so many recreational uses has generated immense interest.

A Forest Service request for public input on the plan generated more than 7,500 comments. Only three comments supported offering the leases, said Susan Elliott, minerals and geology program manager for the Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest in Elko.

“For people who have been in the Elko area years and years and years this is home, they love the mountains,” said Fermina Stevens, a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians.

“That is where our medicines are, that is where our ancestors are buried,” Stevens said. “It is everything to us.”

‘It smells like money’

The Ruby Mountains proposal comes as federal energy policy is undergoing whiplash while agencies transition from the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama to current Republican President Donald Trump.

Under Obama, the government took action to incentivize the production of renewable energy such as wind and solar on public land. The Obama administration sought to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, the primary cause of global warming.

Trump, who has publicly mocked the documented effects of global warming, has shown more willingness to champion fossil fuel development. The administration has already approved oil drilling in the Arctic and public land drilling proponents credit Trump for newfound enthusiasm for exploration on public land.

“The good news is the leases are now available and you get them cheap,” Alan Chamberlain, a Las Vegas-based geologist who says Nevada has “trillions of barrels” of untapped oil underground, said during an energy conference in November. “Thank you, President Trump.”

In addition to the expression of interest for leases in the Ruby Mountains, the Bureau of Land Management has other large proposals on the table in Nevada.

The agency is considering one plan to offer leases on about 67,000 acres in Elko, Eureka and White Pine Counties in March.

Additionally, the BLM has a lease sale scheduled for Dec. 12 that includes as many as 389,000 acres from Alamo in the south to the Little Smoky Valley near Eureka in the north.

Opponents of that sale say the BLM hasn’t adequately studied the potential harm to groundwater nor has the agency consulted with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regarding endangered species that could be at risk from drilling.

Under Trump, critics say, agencies appear to be opening up more land with fewer restrictions.

“The actual process of acquiring a lease is exactly the same as it was under Obama,” said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It's the amount of land being made available, and the amount of restrictions being placed on how that land can be developed.”

The changes, “will make it much easier to drill, with fewer conditions, less mitigation, and fewer hassles for the oil companies,” Donnelly said.

That’s music to the ears of pro-drilling advocates,

Chamberlain’s pro-drilling comments on Nov. 9 at the America First Energy Conference in Houston, Texas were practically gleeful about the prospects for oil extraction under Trump.

The conference was organized by the Heartland Institute, a private, non-profit education organization that disputes the documented connection between fossil fuel consumption and global warming and downplays climate risk communities face.

A video of Chamberlain’s presentation posted on YouTube shows an enthusiastic call for more oil and gas development throughout eastern Nevada. Chamberlain, who did not return calls for comment, said a dramatic increase in Nevada drilling would be lucrative for investors.

“I can hardly wait,” Chamberlain said, later adding, “I love the smell of oil, it smells like money.”

Nevada’s little-known oil history

While Chamberlain is bullish on Nevada’s oil future, the history of oil and gas development in the state is modest.

The first well on record in Nevada came in 1907 and was an 1,800-foot dry hole in Washoe County, just southwest of Reno.

From there, drilling was sporadic and records were sparse until the 1950s.

In 1954, Shell Oil drilled the first commercially producing wells in Railroad Valley in Nye County. The valley saw several discoveries in the latter half of the 20th century and in 1986 one well produced 4,300 barrels per day, making it the most productive on-shore well in the U.S., according to the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology. From 1953 through 1999, Nevada produced 46 million barrels, with peak production of 4 million barrels in 1990.

Since then, however, production plunged steadily and was below 279,000 barrels in 2016.

In contrast, producers on the Bakken oil shale in North Dakota have extracted as much in two months as Nevada has produced in more than 50 years.

In recent years oil interests have shifted their Nevada focus to Elko County. In 2012 Noble Energy announced plans to explore on 350,000 acres, including an area around Jiggs in the valley west of the Ruby Range.

The company invested millions of dollars and drilled four wells, two of which produced oil.

“They basically demonstrated you can produce oil out of the Elko shale,” said William Ehni, an oil industry geologist in Carson City.

Oil prices, however, fell to the point Noble felt the investment wasn’t worth the effort and left Nevada. The Elko wells are inactive.

“It is sad that they walked away from it,” Ehni said.

Ruby Mountains proposal called longshot, at best

While Ehni and other geologists say it’s likely there’s more oil to be found in the Elko formation they say it’s a much different story in the Ruby Mountains.

“My professional opinion is there is zero oil and gas, hydrocarbon potential in that area,” said Chris Henry, a research geologist for the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.

Unlike the shale beneath the valleys where Noble found oil, the rocks that make up the Ruby Range are much older and metamorphosed millions of years ago and several miles beneath the surface of the Earth.

At that depth, the temperature is so hot fossil fuels would have cooked away. Additionally, even if there were source rocks with fossil fuels there’s little to no evidence of underlying geology that could trap them in a way they could be tapped.

“Going out there in the Elko basin is a great idea, out in the valley, not up in the mountains,” Ehni said.

Just the idea of starting the process to acquire oil and gas leases in the Ruby Mountains threatens to do more harm than good for the oil and gas industry, Ehni said.

Not only are the prospects for finding oil incredibly low, the notion of drilling in a part of Nevada that’s popular for natural beauty and outdoor recreation is a political and public relations mistake, he said.

“It would be like filing in a national park somewhere,” Ehni said.

The controversial nature of the Ruby proposal even has some questioning whether the federal government makes it too easy for speculators to file so-called “expressions of interest” documents.

Under federal law, anyone can identify public land and file an expression of interest in land to be included in a future oil and gas lease sale.

The BLM will look at the land and determine the jurisdiction and whether or not oil and gas leasing would be an allowable use. If the land is under Forest Service jurisdiction, as with the Ruby Mountains proposal, the BLM will ask the Forest Service to evaluate the request.

Through the review process, the agency will determine how much, if any, of the land should be offered up in a future lease sale. Available land can then go up for lease to the high bidder. The BLM would not offer the Ruby leases without consent from the Forest Service.

If the agencies authorize leases and the lease holder wants to disturb the ground to explore or drill for oil or gas he or she would need to go through another permitting process.

Unlike the process for developing geothermal resources, which requires fees, the expression of interest process which kick-starts an oil and gas lease requires no money and little documentation up front from the person nominating the land.

“Anyone can come in and nominate acreage and it doesn’t cost them anything,” said Richard Perry, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals. “That seems like it is a bit wide open.”

Elko County Commissioner Rex Steninger said he thinks existing rules provide adequate protection for the environmental and recreation values of the land.

The Elko County Commission submitted one of the only three letters in favor of proceeding with the leasing review process in the Ruby Mountains.

“The national policy now coming from the Trump administration is to open up areas for exploration,” Steninger said. “I’m pretty confident we have enough safeguards in place nothing will be disturbed or harmed.”

Steninger said he's not worried about the mountains because "geologically there is no oil potential there."

And if there were oil, Steninger said, he's confident oil companies could remove it without harming the environment.

"I would never support any disturbance of the Ruby Mountains," Steninger said. "If they could find a way to tap into it with horizontal drilling from somewhere else of course I would be in support of it."

The overwhelming majority of people who have commented so far on the Ruby Mountains proposal disagree.

In addition to everyday residents, conservation organizations such as Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Wilderness Society oppose the plan.

In comments to the Forest Service the Nevada Department of Wildlife, which regulates fishing and hunting in the state, expressed "great concern" because the lease request covers, "some of the richest fish and wildlife resources the state of Nevada has to offer."

Nearly every commenter urged the Forest Service, which is expected to make a decision on the expression of interest sometime in the spring, to reject the idea.

Justin French, 45, of Spring Creek said he grew up in Elko before going to college in Montana and working in the coal industry in Wyoming.

He’s since moved back to Nevada and hunts deer with his wife, Stephanie, on land he said was included in the proposal.

French, who now works for a solar water pumping company, said he witnessed changes in Wyoming he doesn’t want to see in the Ruby Mountains.

“I got to see development first hand,” French said. “I saw sage grouse that I hunted, antelope I hunted in that part of the world just disappear. That country changed."