Washington (Platts)--15Jan2009

The US Senate on Thursday approved in a 73-21 vote a broad public lands
bill that would, among other things, place 1.2 million acres of the Wyoming
Range off limits to oil and natural gas producers.

The package contains more than 160 measures dealing with the use of
federal lands that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, had
hoped to enact last year. A vote was delayed, however, by Oklahoma Republican
Senator Tom Coburn, who objected to the bill's cost, spending priorities, and
the harmful effect he said it would have both on oil and gas production and
the ability to build electric transmission lines over federal lands.

"We should be doing everything we can to ensure increased access to
energy in the future," said Coburn, rather than putting new areas off limits
in order to protect their wilderness value.

One of the bills Coburn singled out for criticism was the Wyoming Range
Legacy Act, sponsored by Republican Wyoming Senator John Barrasso. Coburn said
the bill would deny producers access to 8.8 Tcf natural gas and 331 million
barrels of oil.

The bill is intended to protect moose, lynx, mule deer and other animals
on the range, and would prohibit the future leasing of the area for oil and
gas production. More than 700,000 acres are currently under lease would not be
affected by the bill.

Supporters of Barrasso's measure, including Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, said Coburn inflated the potential
oil and gas reserves in the range. He cited a June US Geologial Survey study
that put the reserves at a more modest 1.1 Tcf of gas and 5 million barrels.

"In my view, this bill does not markedly undermine energy independence,"
Bingaman saind in floor debate on Wednesday.

Coburn, however, has criticized the accuracy of the USGS study, saying it
relied on old data and used questionable methodology. "Despite arguments to
the contrary, we're going to significantly alter our access to millions of
barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas," the senator said
shortly before the vote.

"We're going to trample on property rights like we haven't in decades.
And I ask myself, 'Why are we doing this?' And I say, 'Because we're thinking
in the very short term.'"

Coburn also warned that another bill included within the omnibus, an
expansion of the so-called National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, would disrupt
the siting of badly needed electricity transmission lines in the West by
arming environmental advocacy groups with added legal ammunition to challenge
transmission siting in scenic areas.

"In our experience, most protected class designations for lands or waters
usually bring the potential to make siting of transmission or generation
facilities more difficult," Ed Legge, a spokesman for the Edison Electric
Institue, a utility trade group, said Wednesday. A designation of rivers as
wild and scenic would fall into this category," he added.

Bingaman spokesman Bill Wicker said, however, that the the bill would not
affect transmission siting, and that power lines are rarely placed near rivers
with this designation because they are too remote.

--Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick_platts.com