Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

Mr. Robinson. Thank you, Senator McClure. Once again, I'm representing the Wilderness Society. I would like to direct my testi mony to the oil and gas controversy today. In 1982 the economic policy department of the Wilderness Socie ty worked together with Economic Associates, Inc., of Washington, DC. to assess the potential productivity of Federal lands for oil and gas development. The following is a summary of our findings. I do have extra summaries of this report. Potentially producible oil and gas is all oil and gas still in the ground likely to be considered economically producible, not neces sarily produced over a long-range future. The most appropriate al ready existing proxy measure of potentially producing oil and gas is the sum of the U.S. Geological Surveys estimate of identified re serves and undiscovered recoverable resources. Identified reserves include proven reserves demonstrated by actual drilling, amounts that can be inferred to exist in the same general areas from the evidence provided by such drilling, and additional amounts of dem onstrated oil and gas that are not now economic to recover but which are projected to become recoverable. Undiscovered recover able resources are based on geological extrapolation from known areas and on speculation regarding geological formations likely to yield producible oil and gas. According to this study, potential wilderness, which is made up of land that Federal agencies have either recommended as suitable for wilderness designation or has under consideration for wilder ness, contains only 3.4 percent of all potentially producible oil and gas and only 2.5 percent of all potentially producible gas. I'm sorry, the first figure was oil, the second was gas. There are approximately 148 million acres of potential wilder ness in the United States, and nearly 60 percent of this land is in Alaska. The proportion of oil and gas in potential wilderness areas is substantially higher in Alaska than in the 48 contiguous States. Of all the potentially producible oil and gas in the Western Overthrust Belt, only 4.8 percent is located on potential wilderness iden 605 tified as Forest Service, National Park Service, and Fish and Wild life Service areas endorsed as suitable BLM WSA's and further planning areas. Given this information, I believe it would be premature to re lease areas such as the Palisades unless adequate studies have been completed or unless there is overwhelming evidence that this area contains large oil and gas reserves, and that these resource values are greater than other resource values. Thank you.