Oil Pipeline ThreatensFour Corners Region:

Explosion of Fracking Putting Chaco Canyon, Clean Air, Climate at Risk

Unprecedented: The “Piñon Pipeline”

• The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is fast-tracking approval of a new oil pipeline in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico.

• Saddle Butte Midstream, LLC wants to construct the pipeline to transport oil fracked from the Mancos shale in the San Juan, Rio Arriba, and Sandoval County area.

• At 130 miles long and impacting a right of way 75 feet wide, the pipeline would impact nearly 10,000 square miles of public, private, and tribal lands.

• Oil loading and unloading facilities, maintenance facilities, and other industrial operations would be developed.

• The Piñon Pipeline would open the door for more than 500 new oil wells.

• 50,000 barrels of oil/day, or 18.25 million barrels of oil/year, would be carried by the pipeline. This region has never produced more than 9 million barrels/year.

What’s at Stake

• The Piñon Pipeline and related oil and gas development threatens a culturally significant landscape that supports Chaco Canyon and as well as Navajo cultural sites throughout the area.

• Landowners, including Navajo landowners, face the prospect of this pipeline destroying their land.

• Inevitable spills would put streams, springs, and groundwater at risk.

Route of the proposed 130 mile Piñon Pipeline in northwestern New Mexico.

• Increased air pollution from ramped up fracking threatens to push smog levels in the San Juan Basin above federal health limits.

• The fracking of 500 new Mancos shale wells will consume more than 650 million gallons of water.

• Water used for fracking is so contaminated it must be disposed of in underground wells. It can never be put back into streams or drinking wells.

• Every year, oil produced as a result of the pipeline would lead to the release 7.8 million metric tons of carbon pollution, as much as two coal-fired power plants.

Even Worse: Looking Before Leaping

• The Bureau of Land Management has never analyzed the impacts of fracking the Mancos shale.

• In February 2014, the Bureau announced it intends to update its Resource Management Plan to ensure Mancos shale fracking does not jeopardize public health and the environment.

• In spite of this, the agency is frast-tracking approval of the pipeline before it updates its Resource Management Plan.

.• The Piñon Pipeline is a poster child for how the

Bureau of Land Management is opening the door for fracking throughout the Western U.S. with no planning and no guaranteed safeguards.

The “Piñon Pipeline,” What’s Next and What Does it Mean?

➡ The Bureau of Land Management is asking for public comment.

➡ Comments are due December 31st. A public hearing is slated to be held in Lybrook, NM on December 4th.

➡ The agency is fast-tracking approval. Given the serious risks and uncertainties around the pipeline, the agency should go slow and prepare an Environmental Impact Statement.

➡ An Environmental Impact Statement will assure greater public involvement, transparency, and scrutiny of environmental and health impacts.

➡ People within and near the San Juan Basin should be concerned and engaged.

.➡ More information and the

Bureau of Land Management’s public notice is online here, https://climatewest.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/pinon-pipeline-notice-and-information.pdf.

➡ For more information, Jeremy Nichols, jnichols@ wildearthguardians.org, (303) 437-7663.Mancos shale fracking is already underway, putting New

Mexico and the western U.S. at risk. WildEarth Guardians and its allies have called for a moratorium.