Traverse City Record-Eagle

Archive: Thursday

September 20, 2012

Company withdraws request to drill near Au Sable

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — A lengthy legal battle over a gas wellhead proposed near the revered Au Sable River ended when a Traverse City company withdrew its permit request.

Savoy Energy LP notified the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in a two-sentence letter it was withdrawing its application to drill below what is known as the Mason Tract in Crawford County.

The letter ended a nine-year legal battle that united the Anglers of the Au Sable and Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club against the forest service, which initially approved Savoy’s permit in 2003.

“This is huge ... and it feels wonderful,” said Marvin Roberson, a forest ecologist for the Sierra Club. “My hope is it will put on notice other oil and gas companies that if you want to drill in the Mason Tract, you will have to put your drilling pad far enough away so we won’t bother you.”

The two environmental groups wanted Savoy to move the drilling pad to an existing forest road about a half-mile to a mile away, but Savoy never responded to the request.

Savoy was not part of the lawsuit and never intervened.

Thomas Pangborn, CEO of Savoy, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Mason Tract is a 4,700-acre wilderness area given to the state as a gift by auto executive and naturalist George Mason. Mason’s directive was that the property never be developed. The South Branch of the Au Sable flows through the tract.

Savoy proposed an exploratory well using slant drilling techniques from nearby land in the Huron-Manistee National Forests that did not allow motorized vehicles. Savoy would have cleared 5 acres to install the drill pad, a brine pit, and processing equipment along with building access roads.

The drill pad was near Mason Chapel, a nondenominational, open-air chapel designed for people to sit and contemplate the river. It’s one of the most revered spots on the river, Roberson said.

“The forest service had decided to do a categorical exclusion; they determined the impact would be so small and insignificant they didn’t need to do a study,” Roberson said.

The two groups credited Nancy Shiffler, a Sierra Club volunteer, and the late Calvin “Rusty” Gates, founder of the Anglers of the Au Sable, with discovering the permit and alerting them before construction began.

“If (Shiffler) had not drawn this to my attention, then there would be a well there right now,” Roberson said.

Gates organized a group of volunteer lawyers to review if the forest service followed the proper process to grant the permit, said Bruce Pregler, president of the Anglers of the Au Sable.

The environmental groups joined forces and won a court injunction to halt drilling. A federal judge ruled against the forest service in 2009 and said a complete environmental impact study was required.

The forest service started the study in 2010 and expected to complete it in 2013, said spokesman Kenneth Arbogast. Some of the work, such as a sound study of drilling, will have value for other permit requests, as will a survey of recreational users conducted this summer, Arbogast said.

“We’ll probably have the contractor who did the survey finish it, because it’s good information to have, but we won’t go any further,” he said.

Savoy did not provide a reason for dropping its permit request, leaving the environmental groups to speculate.

“Maybe they grew tired of waiting,” Pregler said. “At the end of the day, I’m just glad our vigilance paid off.”

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