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ODESSA The dune lizard burrows its thick, spiny body to cool down and sometimes to conserve heat deep beneath the sand dunes in the Mescalero-Monahans Ecosystem 30 miles west of this West Texas city.
But the 2.5-inch-long sand lizards at home, populated by low-gloss oak trees, are being decimated as the oil and gas industry expands, posing a major threat to their survival, federal regulators and scientists said. .
After four decades of warnings from biologists about the existential threat oil and gas exploration and development poses to the reptile’s habitat, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the rare lizard endangered last week.
Industry representatives have fought for years against the designation, saying it would scare away companies interested in drilling within the most lucrative oil and natural gas basin.
The list requires oil and gas companies to avoid operating in areas where the lizard lives, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has not yet determined where those areas are because it is still gathering information, according to Beth Ullenberg, a spokeswoman for the Service.
If the energy industry violates the lizards’ habitat, they can face fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment, depending on the violation. However, Ullenberg said the agency will work with the companies to avoid penalties.
In a statement, the Fish and Wildlife Service said oil and gas operators can use horizontal drilling to reach oil and gas deposits without disrupting the lizards’ habitat.
The lizard lives in only about 4% of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the lizard has been found in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward and Winkler counties.
Lee Fitzgerald, a professor at Texas A&M University who has studied the lizard since 1994, said drilling a single oil well does not affect the lizard’s survival, but the fragmentation of its habitat by the oil industry’s infrastructure and gas, including roads leading to drilling. the location isolates the reptiles and prevents them from finding mates beyond those already living nearby.
Fitzgerald compared oil and gas infrastructure to urban sprawl.
If you build a house, it’s not a problem, he said. But you build 1000 houses, and each of them has a road, and each of them has a road, connecting it with more houses, then you get urban sprawl. And if you do this in oak sand dunes, then the lizards disappear.
There are few lizards left and they are hard to find, making it difficult to count them accurately. According to a 2023 analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the lizard is functionally extinct in 47% of its range.
Fitzgerald said the lizard’s population estimates don’t matter.
The lizard is just one piece of the puzzle that is disappearing, he said. It’s out there, it’s alive. We should be proud of it, that we have it and it is so special. So it is more about the non-monetary values of the lizard as it is part of the big picture of biodiversity.
The listing could cause disruptions in oil production
The decision to categorize the lizard as an endangered species was unwelcome news to oil and gas industry executives, who said federal regulators provided insufficient guidance for operators to assess how to decide where to build service roads. and where to pierce. Industry members also said they were skeptical of the science supporting the designation.
I think the lizard is not in danger of extinction, said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association.
The consequences of the listing won’t be immediate, but could have lasting impacts on the future of oil and gas extraction, Shepperd said, adding that it could affect the company’s ability to drill without violating federal requirements under the Act. Endangered Species.
Not overnight, but over the next few months, we believe this will lead to a reduction in drilling. We believe this will lead to job losses, Shepperd said.
In a joint statement with the Texas Oil and Gas Association submitted to the federal agency last year, energy industry leaders argued that oil and gas companies were already taking steps to prevent further disturbance of the lizards’ habitat: a buffer 200 meters between their operations and the lizards at home, minimizing their presence in the area and using existing service roads as opposed to building more.
Industry representatives also said oil and gas companies had participated in voluntary conservation agreements, a program in which companies and private landowners pledge to protect the lizards’ habitat. Environmentalists have criticized the agreements because there is no enforcement or penalties if companies do not comply or a way to determine whether the plans are effective.
State and statewide oil and gas associations have not ruled out litigation, Shepperd said.
Scott Lauermann, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said the ruling could delay the permits companies need for each phase of oil and gas exploration and production.
Such permits can authorize companies to build the infrastructure needed to pump oil such as oil rigs and service roads. Federal officials encouraged companies to consult with the agency early in their planning.
Lizard Wars
Ten generations of lizards have lived and died as a battle ensued between environmental groups, the oil and gas industry and the federal government to protect them.
Fish and Wildlife first identified the sage-grouse lizard as in need of protection in 1982. Since then, it has been removed and added to the endangered species candidate list several times, but the proposals were dropped because the Fish Service and Wildlife said it could not afford to evaluate whether the lizard should have been listed, said Michael Robinson, a senior conservation attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. The center has petitioned and sued the Fish and Wildlife Service several times over nearly two decades regarding the lizard.
In 2002, the center sent a scientific petition to the Fish and Wildlife Service, asking the agency to add the lizard to the endangered species list. The service did not act, citing a lack of resources, Robinson said.
The service proposed adding the lizard to the endangered species list back in 2010, but withdrew the proposal 18 months later.
Instead, then-Texas Comptroller Susan Combs collected voluntary conservation agreements, a promise from landowners and operators to avoid activities such as oak removal and road construction, to convince the federal government to avoid listing the the lizard as endangered, a decision that drew praise from the oil. and the gas industry and rebuke from environmentalists and wildlife conservation groups.
State and federal officials argued the measure would be enough to protect the lizard. More than 200 ranchers and oil and gas companies between Texas and New Mexico, federal officials said.
Shepperd said Chevron, ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum were among them.
Robinson argued that the agreements protected the oil and gas industry from modest changes in their day-to-day operations.
It’s a sad case of a federal agency being captured by the industries they’re supposed to hold accountable, Robinson said.
In 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned again to protect the lizards. In 2022, the Center sued the Fish and Wildlife Service again, a lawsuit that resulted in a settlement agreement, which led to another proposal to add the lizard to the endangered species list.
Ullenberg, the Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said the petition prompted the agency to conduct a review of the species and ultimately add it to the endangered list last week.
Robinson said this is an important first step.
At least the governments attention will be focused on the project [recovering] species, and that’s no small thing, he said.
Disclosure: Ben Shepperd, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Permian Basin Petroleum Association and Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a full list of them here.
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