© 2002, The Oil & Gas Accountability Project and Naked Essence Web Designs.
The Oil & Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) was formed in 1999 to build the collective power of citizens who find themselves face to face with huge energy corporations that can drill for oil and gas a stone's throw from a home or in a pristine expanse of public lands. OGAP brings together more than 100 organizations to advocate for greater corporate and governmental accountability, responsibility and respect for people and places in the course of oil and gas development. OGAP organizes grassroots networks to affect oil and gas policy reform on the federal, state, tribal, and local level. OGAP multiplies the effectiveness of these grassroots organizations by providing support, networking, and coordination for activists engaged in campaigns against some of America's mightiest corporations. It is OGAP's mission to work with communities to prevent and reduce the social, economic and environmental impacts caused by oil and gas development.
OGAP offers critical support services for communities and private landowners who face oil and gas issues. In October 2003, OGAP will host its annual People's Oil & Gas Summit bringing together organizations, activists and landowners from across the country to build new skills, develop strategies and strengthen the national network of oil and gas activists! OGAP also works to raise the visibility of oil and gas issues through the media. Throughout the last year, we have provided information to a number of national media outlets, including Time Magazine, Newsweek, People Magazine, Mother Jones, CNN, The Denver Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News and NBC Nightly News resulting in widespread newspaper, radio and television stories. OGAP also provides one-on-one technical support to organizations to develop effective organizing and legal strategies. OGAP educates landowners on their rights, distributes model surface use agreements, and distributes citizens' guides to participating in oil and gas decision-making on public lands and negotiating with oil and gas companies. Through these services OGAP seeks to build an organized constituency committed to reforming oil and gas policy on public, private and tribal lands, and directly assist property owners who often have little recourse or bargaining power with oil and gas companies who lease the mineral rights below their property.
As America struggles to meet its energy demands and reduce air pollution, the oil and gas industry has promoted coalbed methane (a form of natural gas) as an environmentally-friendly fuel. The total fuel-cycle impacts of coalbed methane (CBM) development, however, are turning large expanses of the U.S. into industrial sacrifice zones. It is an overall objective of The CBM Project to dispel the industry-perpetuated myth that natural gas is a clean energy and point out accelerated CBM development is undermining efforts to pursue renewable energy sources. With tens of thousands of CBM wells proposed across the United States and Canada, this is a critical time for citizen and environmental groups to join together to aggressively challenge CBM development. OGAP's Coalbed Methane Project currently brings together sixteen organizations from Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to gain greater corporate and government accountability for the protection of vast landscapes from the devastating impacts of coalbed methane development on the local, state, federal and tribal levels.
OGAP is helping organize grassroots networks that tackle oil and gas issues on a statewide basis. OGAP's Colorado network seeks to reform the policies and practices of the industry-dominated Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. In 2003, OGAP will work with more than 20 other Colorado-based groups to clarify county authority to regulate the land use impacts of oil and gas development, allow counties to regulate the noise levels of oil and gas operations, and require the COGCC to protect the confidentiality of those reporting oil and gas violations. OGAP's New Mexico Network will work this year to block industry attempts to rollback New Mexico's air quality standards, ban unlined pits which are used to dispose of toxic drilling chemicals and produced water, monitor industry-generated legislative proposals, and develop strategies for local reforms.
Gwen Lachelt, Executive Director
Jennifer Goldman, Public Health
and Toxics Coordinator
Bruce Baizel, Staff Attorney
Carolyn Lamb, Staff Attorney
Lisa Sumi, Research Director
Tom Morrissey, Webmaster
Lynda Alfred, Grant Writer
Lynn Schneider, Bookkeeper
Chuck Malick, Lobbyist
Gloria Flora, Secretary, Helena, Montana
Dan Heilig, Lander, Wyoming
Jill Morrison, Sheridan, Wyoming
Dan Randolph, President, Durango, Colorado
Jack Scott, Treasurer, Aztec, New Mexico
Karin Sheldon, South Royalton, Vermont
Wilma Subra, New Iberia, Louisiana
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This page last modified on 29 June 2005
. © 2002, The Oil & Gas Accountability Project and Naked Essence Web Designs. |