The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to open 125,744 acres of public and private land across Colorado to oil and gas drilling. An upcoming December 2026 oil and gas lease sale includes seven parcels covering 5,063 acres on the Roan Plateau. The agency opened a 30-day public comment period on June 9.
The Roan Plateau rises 3,000 feet above the Colorado River Valley, just west of Rifle. It is home to streams, creeks, dramatic waterfalls, alpine meadows and quaking aspen, elk and mule deer habitat, a genetically pure strain of native cutthroat trout and plants, such as the Parachute penstemon, found nowhere else on the planet. It is also rich in natural gas, with an estimated 8.9-trillion-cubic-feet hidden in its depths.
This isn’t the first time the biological diversity of the Roan Plateau has been threatened by energy extraction. More than a decade ago, during the drill-baby-drill frenzy of the George W. Bush administration, environmental groups, such as Carbondale’s Wilderness Workshop, were victorious in protecting the top of the Roan from natural gas drilling.
Peter Hart, legal director for Wilderness Workshop, told The Sun that Bush’s decision to open up the Roan to natural gas leasing generated a huge amount of public controversy, prompting a lawsuit led by Earthjustice.
“That legal victory was then appealed by industry, which paved the way for a settlement that happened around 2012, which closed most of the top of the Roan Plateau to future leasing,” he explained.
The agreement canceled 17 of 19 leases that had already been sold, allowed for drilling at the base of the plateau and protected much of the Roan from new leasing for 20 years, beginning in 2016. Bill Barrett Corp was also refunded about $4 million in bonus bids and annual rental payments. Two leases were left on the top of the plateau and relinquished in 2024.
Hart said that offering the Roan Plateau leases in December does not violate the settlement agreement, even though it’s good for 20 years.
“[The settlement] included a whole bunch of provisions that constrained any development that might occur on those leases,” Hart said. “And it conditioned those leases with specific stipulations that protected some of the values up there.”
The settlement also established where natural gas pads could be placed within those two leases. “So that small area on top of the Roan was not closed and that’s why we’re having this conversation now,” Hart added.
The BLM plans to offer those leases and five more on the Roan, totaling a little over 5,000 acres, in the December lease sale. “So, we’re now in a position where we’re back at the beginning of fighting new oil and gas leases on top of the Roan Plateau,” Hart said.
The 2012 settlement agreement resulted in the 2016 Resource Management Plan Amendment which governs management of the Roan Plateau. Getting there was a massive effort, involving conservation and sportsmen groups as well as representatives of local, state and federal government and members of Congress. But this time may be more difficult.
In late June, the BLM announced a 60-day public comment period for a revision of current oil and gas regulations, put in place during the Biden administration. According to a BLM press release, “The proposals revise both the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas leasing rule and the waste prevention rule.”
Hart told The Sun that this means fewer opportunities for public participation in lease sales and a significant reduction of Biden-era bonding requirements for gas and oil well cleanup.
“Currently, we have a comment period at scoping. We have a comment period after they produce an [environmental assessment] and then we have an opportunity to protest,” he explained. “According to that rule, there won’t be opportunities to comment until the protest period, and the protest period will only be a 10-day period.” He added that the new rule would add per-page costs to protest filings over 50 pages.
Hart said that the goal this time is to get the BLM to defer the Roan Plateau leases, but the energy dominance and deregulatory agenda of the current administration makes it more difficult to challenge federal energy decisions.
“I hesitate to say that the Bush administration played by all the rules because there was some nefarious stuff that happened during that process, but they were sort of playing within the same rule book,” Hart said. “And this administration, they’re burning the rule book and trying to create their own.”
The public scoping period for the December oil and gas lease sale ends on July 9. Comments about the new BLM oil and gas rule are due by August 22.