TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A Traverse City company is abandoning a nearly decade-long effort to extract natural gas in an environmentally sensitive area of Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula, federal officials say.
The U.S. Forest Service reported this week that Savoy Energy LP recently submitted a letter withdrawing an application to drill below a site called the Mason Tract in Crawford County. The Mason Tract is a 4,700-acre wilderness area near the south branch of the Au Sable River.
Savoy wanted to drill an exploratory well using slant drilling techniques from nearby land in national forests. Environmental groups fought the plan in court. A judge ordered a complete environmental impact study in 2009, which has not been finished.
Sierra Club forest ecologist Marvin Roberson told the Traverse City Record-Eagle (http://bit.ly/PuOTtq) he was pleased with the company’s decision.
“This is huge … and it feels wonderful,” Roberson said. “My hope is it will put on notice other oil and gas companies that if you want to drill in the Mason Tract, you will have to put your drilling pad far enough away so we won’t bother you.”
The Associated Press left a phone message with Savoy, which did not respond to the Record-Eagle’s request for comment.
Savoy’s plan called for clearing five acres in the Huron-Manistee National Forest to install a drill pad, a brine pit and processing equipment, as well as build access roads.
The drill pad would have been near Mason Chapel, an open-air worship and contemplation site that Roberson described as one of the most revered places along the river.
The Forest Service approved Savoy’s permit in 2003, determining the project’s footprint would be so insignificant that a full environmental impact study was not needed. The Sierra Club and Anglers of the Au Sable won a court injunction to halt the drilling and in 2009, a federal judge ordered a complete study.
Spokesman Ken Arbogast said the forest service will go ahead with the study, which should be finished next year, because the information could prove useful in the future.
