SA's Missions, other national parks on drilling list - San Antonio Express

From the San Antonio Missions to the Palo Alto Battlefield in South Texas, as many as 30 national parks could be the site of future oil and gas drilling, according to new analysis.

The sites administered by the National Park Service have a relatively high likelihood of being home to future energy development because all of them are close to oil and gas resources, drilling already is happening nearby and individuals or companies own mineral rights inside their boundaries.

The locations were identified by the National Park Service, in response to a request for data from the left-leaning Center for American Progress, which issued a report on the subject today. Some of the sites, including the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, are near booming shale gas fields.

Two other NPS-administered sites in Texas also made the list, the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site.

Other parks that made the list for possible future drilling include Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and the Everglades National Park in South Florida, as well as the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown, Pa., where one of the planes hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, was downed after passengers intervened.

Nearly 700 oil and gas wells already have been drilled in 12 national parks, including Big Thicket National Park in East Texas and Padre Island National Seashore in South Texas.

The National Park Service is in the process of updating regulations governing oil and gas activity in the sites. It is the first substantive rewrite of the regulations in three decades.

But the topic has attracted new attention as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has unveiled an energy plan that would give states the power to permit oil and gas projects on federal lands within their borders.

In the Center for American Progress report, author Jessica Goad says oil and gas drilling “is a dirty business that, if done improperly, has the potential to do substantial harm to national parks and other public lands.”

She notes that the activity often comes with a surge in infrastructure or increased demand on existing roads and pipelines.