By SARAH RUBY, Californian staff writer
The Bakersfield Californian
November 11, 2005

Carrizo Plain National Monument protects the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, the San Joaquin antelope squirrel and the giant kangaroo rat. It also allows more than a dozen oil and gas leases to survive.

Richard D. Sawyer of Malibu holds one of these leases and plans to drill for oil, according to the Bureau of Land Management's Bakersfield office. He will explore 153 acres at the southern end of the Carrizo Plain in San Luis Obispo County.

If it passes environmental scrutiny, Sawyer's may be the first new oil or gas exploration on the Carrizo Plain since it was declared a monument by President Clinton in 2001, said Ron Huntsinger, regional manager for the Bureau of Land Management. The Bureau of Land Management oversees the monument.

The oil and gas lease will be operated by Longbow LLC of Bakersfield, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Neither Sawyer nor Longbow LLC could be reached for comment Friday.

Sawyer has held the lease since 1988, and he'll lose it if he doesn't start drilling by March, according to the Bureau of Land Management. His oil and gas lease was left intact when the monument was created, but it can't be renewed if it's allowed to lapse, Huntsinger said.

Oil and gas exploration on the Carrizo Plain has never been terribly productive, and Carrizo resident Pat Veesart would like to see it stay that way.

"From the perspective of someone who's spent a lot of years out here and loves this place, I would be very concerned about oil and gas development out here," he said. "It's not what national monuments are for."

Huntsinger acknowledged that new wells were not what Clinton had in mind when he created the monument.

"There's a clear intention in the proclamation that oil and gas leasing is not consistent (with the monument)," Huntsinger said.

At the same time, the president honored existing rights, Huntsinger said.

"It becomes a controversial issue," Huntsinger said. "I would suspect the environmental community is not going to welcome it with open arms."

Sawyer and his on-site operator have about a month to study wildlife in the area and make a report to the Bureau of Land Management. Once that's done, the federal lands agency will write up an environmental study. This stage can take months, even years with legal challenges, but in this case it will take about a month because the Bureau of Land Management has already done an in-depth environmental survey.

Before the agency decides whether to give Sawyer

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