The oil age began in 1859, when Edwin Drake’s well hit oil just south of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The first oil boom decimated the Allegheny Forest. Pennsylvania’s oil production peaked 32 years later, in 1891, but it’s taken all the time since then for the forest to begin to recover from that. More recently, with global oil production peaking, some of the old wells have been re-opened. As expensive as they are to drill, the rising price of oil makes them economical again. The Allegheny National Forest has been in the center of it all, and with the U.S. Forest Service’s long history of whoring our forests to corporate interests, despair was long justified. But, to our shocked astonishment, the U.S. Forest Service spontaneously grew a pair and released a forest plan revision that actually began to stand up to the oil and gas drillers who’ve come back to finish the job that the “Allegheny Brush Heap” had started. The 90-day appeal period went forward with nary a sound, set to expire July 2. Then, yesterday, POGROM POGAM filed their appeal.

First, a bit of a history lesson is in order. Largely because of the flooding in Pittsburgh, Coolidge turned the Allegheny into a national forest in 1923, in order to produce a forest to protect the Allegheny River’s watershed. But to do so, the government bought only the surface rights—the mineral rights remain, overwhelmingly, private property. This is unique in the national forest system, and due in no small part to the mineral wealth the Allegheny sits on. The forest sits on a plateau that juts out of the Appalachian Mountains, the oldest mountain chain in the world. Eons ago, it was the home of an enormous rain forest—a verdant jungle that died to become the oil, natural gas and coal that now lies underneath so much of Penn’s Woods. For the most part, the Forest Service has been a willing accomplice. The Allegheny National Forest is currently the site of over 8,000 oil & natural gas wells, and the old, unrevised forest plan called for 7,500 more. The access roads cut through the forest with the density of some small cities, and the old plan called for 1,600 more miles of road to reach all the new wells, with 10,000 acres of forest to be cleared in the process. The new revision and other recent actions on the Forest Service’s part actually provide some cause for optimism, though.

“The most change in the plan is in our direction on oil and gas,” Mr. Connelly said. “We want to do a better job working with the oil and gas firms on well siting so that there is the least impact on surface values.”

In what may be a precursor of that new direction, the Forest Service filed an official objection in January to an application to drill four oil and gas wells on and near the 4,600-mile North Country Trail in McKean County. In February it filed another objection to a proposal to drill five wells along state Route 59 in Warren County, designated the Longhouse National Scenic Byway.

The official objections to oil and gas development permit proposals are the first ever filed by federal officials in the Allegheny, where the mineral or subsurface rights under 93 percent of the forest are owned by individuals and oil and gas companies.¹

Even so, the revised plan still subsidizes oil and gas companies by providing free stone for access roads, and offering experts to help companies develop plans that should cost the companies themselves. Such federal assistance is what makes it worthwhile to drill thoroughly peaked fields: they help reduce the actual cost of drilling by moving more of the cost to tax-payers.

That said, the new revision provides the best reason for hope yet: it outlines a goal for the Forest Service to buy up the subsurface rights below the Allegheny, the single biggest reason why oil companies are still permitted to rip through the forest and tear apart its ecological viability with such a dense mesh of access roads, and poison the entire forest with endemic leaks and spills.

Which brings us to yesterday’s news: POGAM’s appeal of the revised forest plan. POGAM is supposed to stand for “Pennsylvania Oil, Gas and Minerals Association,” an abbreviation apparently derived by the illiterate.

“In essence, the Forest Service is trying to use its new plan as a tool for overturning a century of well-established law that defines the relationship between oil and gas producers and the federal government—the co-owners of the ANF,” POGAM President Steve Rhoads explains.²

Co-owners? Unfortunately, the mistakes of history have left the subsurface rights still in the hands of the same people who wiped out the forest a century ago. They’re awfully quick to assert their rights to drill those subsurface properties, but what about their constant violations of the public property they’re “co-owners” with? The access roads, the drill sites, and worst of all, the constant oil slicks. They are eager to destroy the forest again, just like they did the first time, and do you think they’ll care as much about their constant predations on every living thing that gets in their way as when they’re held to account for the damage they do?

The Forest Service has finally stood up for the forest, and POGAM doesn’t like it. As someone who supports living things, I’ve usually found myself opposed to the U.S. Forest Service in principle and in practice, but for once they’ve done the right thing, and that needs to be encouraged as strongly as possible. POGAM wants them to stop, roll over, and let them finish the job. I can scarcely believe I’m saying this, but the time’s come to stand behind the Forest Service.