Drilling for oil under Lake Sakakawea

By LAUREN DONOVAN Bismarck Tribune | Posted: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 2:00 am

With the best crude oil two miles underground, what’s on top doesn’t interfere much, even massive Lake Sakakawea.

Most of the oil and gas minerals “under the lake” — kind of an inept description because it’s more than 10,000 feet down to get to the Bakken Formation — are now leased  in a climate of vigorous oil production.

Producers are itching to get it.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is facing a small barrage of requests to put oil pads on corps land to extract oil, either under Lake Sakakawea or near it, amidst thousands of related real estate transactions.

What is in the tens of drilling requests now likely will ramp into the hundreds.

The corps wants to know what people think about the prospect of oil wells dotting the shoreline and oil roads, rig-haul semis and tanker trucks in what largely has been remote habitat for birds and wildlife and cattle grazing.

Some will see prosperity and some will see problems.

Today’s technology using lateral legs means most oil can be tapped from near the shoreline. But not all.

Wild as offshore drilling may seem in North Dakota, with a lake that stretches 14 miles across in some places, it’s a “never say never” situation, said lake manager Phil Brown.

The corps is taking public comment to devise what Brown calls a “programmatic” approach to the drilling applications.

Public meetings will be held at 5:30 tonight at the 4 Bears Casino in New Town and 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Montana-Dakota Utilities in Williston.

The comments will become part of an environmental assessment on oil development on the Garrison Dam project. That could possibly evolve into a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement process that takes several years.

In the meantime, there is no moratorium. Brown said drillers on corps land have to fill out an environmental inventory, however. The assessment is intended to streamline that process and could possibly lead to guidelines on where and how the corps’ land is used for drilling.

Most immediately, the corps is dealing with about 35 drilling requests on land it owns. They are primarily up into the Little Missouri arm, rugged Badlands country where the river finds its way into the lake.

Brown said one driller would build five miles of road to get to the pad site. At least half the sites would be within a half mile of the lake, he said.

The situation demonstrates the extent of potential disturbance around the lake.

“It’s not just the view shed, it’s the prairie, the habitat, the cultural aspects, threatened and endangered species, and water quality with the potential for spills and contamination,” he said.

For much of Lake Sakakawea, the corps is just like any other landowner who owns the surface but not the minerals.

The corps — actually the federal government — only owns oil and gas minerals on the eastern third of the lake, roughly from Beaver Bay to Riverdale.

The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and private individuals own the rest from Beaver Bay west.

Brown said the corps must nearly always approve drilling where it doesn’t have the minerals, because the surface is subject to oil and gas rights.

“On federal minerals, it’s a different story. We do have the option to say no. It hasn’t been an issue because all the requests have been on other minerals,” Brown said.

There are already 46 well pads on corps land north of Watford City and between Williston and the confluence with the Yellowstone River.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 701-748-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)