More oil drilling proposed for S. Fla.

Environmentalists oppose projects on land that’s crucial to wildlife

The boom in U.S. oil production may one day extend to southern Florida, where several companies have proposed operations to extract the valuable black liquid from some of the most sensitive habitats in the state.

No drilling is imminent, since these projects require extensive permitting and preparation. And the plans come as the state looks more likely to pass a ban on fracking, a technique that has unlocked vast oil deposits at what many environmentalists see as an unacceptable cost to water supplies.

But with or without fracking, environmentalists oppose the Florida projects as attempts to thrust unsightly, noisy and environmentally hazardous operations onto land that’s crucial to the state’s wildlife.

“During the time of drilling, it’s extremely loud,” said Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida

Wildlands Association, who has visited existing oil operations at Big Cypress and gone to court to fight new drilling projects. “There are fumes. You’re putting a construction site in the middle of the Amazon of North America.The cumulative impact of oil, development, more people, more cars, is just overwhelming.”

In one of the larger proposals, a Mississippi company named Tocala LLC received a state permit in November to detonate explosives in 6,000 holes drilled across 110 square miles to look for oil north of Big Cypress National Preserve. In another, Trend Exploration, a North Fort Myers company, has applied for a drilling permit for Caracara Prairie Preserve, a Collier County natural area where the mineral rights remain in private hands. Four other proposals are pending or in the initial stages of exploration.

Projects north of Big Cypress National Preserve, such as Tocala’s, could be particularly harmful because they would take place on critical land for Florida’s wildlife, Schwartz said.

“Those uplands are some of the best habitat for bears and panthers,” he said. “If there’s a groundzero for terrestrial wildlife, it’s there. There are bears, panthers, deer, fox squirrels, and now they’re bringing in this industrial activity.”

A Tocala representative declined comment. But David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council, said such projIn ects are Florida’s fair share in maintaining the high domestic production of oil and gas, which contributes to the world’s supply and helps keep prices low for gasoline and electricity. Florida continues to produce a significant share of the nation’s oil and gas, he said, with safeguards that have successfully protected the environment.

“It’s not Saudi Arabia, but collectively it adds up,” he said. “Currently in Florida we have produced

604 million barrels of oil and 808 billion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s not west Texas production, but it’s a pile of oil and gas. It’s too easily dismissed as being insignificant.”

Oil production in the United States has more than doubled since

2008, largely due to the use of fracking, allowing the United States to pass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer.

As a major user of petroleum products, he said, Florida should be willing to produce them too.

“We use 28 million gallons of motor fuel every day in Florida, and it’s my industry that has to make sure we have it today and tomorrow and the next day,” he said. “After a storm in Florida, people are screaming for my industry’s product, but we have to be cooperative in the production as well.”

South Florida’s oil industry, which goes back to the first discovery during World War II, bears little resemblance to its counterparts in Texas or Oklahoma, with their vast fields of pumps and drilling towers.

Drilling and oil extraction take place discretely on farms, in fields and in forests along an underground series of oil deposits called the Sunniland Trend, which stretches diagonally across the state from Fort Myers to Miami. At Big Cypress National Preserve, for example, there are complexes of pipes, pumps and tanks in the forest, industrial operations that can be seen by hawks, panthers and squirrels, as well as the occasional intrepid hiker.

“If you look at our industry’s track record, people don’t even know that we produce anything in Florida, and that’s a good thing,” Mica said. “Our industry has been a really good steward of the habitat, and the animals can find their way around these facilities. When you look at our track record, it’s been stellar.”

There are several other projects at various stages in southern Florida. Burnett Oil Co. continues to search across another 110 square miles of Big Cypress, where the company has used special trucks to generate vibrations used to detect oil. In the Everglades of western Broward County, Kanter Real Estate LLC is awaiting a court ruling on the state’s denial of a drilling permit. Drawbridge Energy Co. applied to drill a well on an abandoned Hendry County citrus operation. MKJ Xploration filed an application two weeks ago to drill on farmland north of Immokalee.

Several bills have been introduced in the state Legislature to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which involves the injection of high-pressure water or chemicals into the ground to open up access to oil. Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would support a ban.

Broward County, where one oil well has been proposed in the Everglades near Miramar, the County Commission last week adopted a resolution in support of a fracking ban, saying, “Fracking has harmful effects on our environment and water, and permanently damages South Florida’s natural resources.”

At Big Cypress, Burnett has been using specially designed trucks to generate vibrations on the ground to gauge the presence of oil on land straddling Alligator Alley. The land is prime habitat for panthers, black bears and other wildlife.

Environmentalists have accused the company of damaging the land in its initial seismic surveys.

Alia Faraj-Johnson, spokeswoman for the company, did not respond to questions on the status of the project, whether any oil has been found, or when the company plans to resume work. She said the company was focused on restoring the land where it had been working.

“Burnett is focused on reclamation activities as our first priority. We will resume these activities as soon as we receive notice from the National Park Service that weather and soil conditions allow for effective reclamation.”

The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Caracara Prairie Preserve, a natural site owned by Collier County, an oil well has been proposed by Trend Exploration LLC. Although the land is publicly owned, the mineral rights remained in private hands. Located in the northwestern part of the county, the land is habitat for the panther, gopher tortoises, snail kite, Big Cypress fox squirrel, and the threatened hawk-like bird for which the preserve was named, the crested caracara.

The project is opposed by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, which filed a letter noting the land’s importance to a wide range of wildlife.

“Our concern is that it’s a sensitive location,” said Amber Crooks, environmental policy manager for the Conservancy. “There’s a caracara nest very close. It’s panther habitat.”

Mike Cheeseman, a geologist who owns Trend, said the land had actually already been disturbed by a previous drilling project. If he gets the necessary permits, he plans to drill six wells to extract what he hopes could be up to 20 million barrels of oil. The oil would be shipped by truck to Port Everglades, where it would be loaded onto barges for transport to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

He said it shouldn’t be difficult to do the work without any permanent environmental harm, since the permits would come with extensive conditions for protecting the landscape.

“Environmentally I would say it’s not a major problem,” he said. “The bird is a caracara bird, kind of common to the county to a certain degree. The feds say there’s no problem with the bird and drilling, but they don’t want us to drill when the bird is nesting. They’re as common as buzzards down here.”