Carving Through Big Cypress National Preserve In Search Of Oil

A year ago the Burnett Oil Company sent 33-ton “vibroseis” trucks into parts of Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida to see if recoverable oil reserves could be located beneath the preserve’s landscape. The second year of fieldwork is being launched any day now. But questions remain about how that work is being conducted.

If the work pointed to valuable oil reserves, the company would have to submit a plan of operations for drilling to the National Park Service if it wanted to develop those reserves. The survey is possible because the Park Service does not own the sub-surface mineral rights in the preserve. Sprawling portions are owned by the Collier Resources Co., which hired Burnett to conduct the surveys.

What last year’s fieldwork turned up hasn’t been publicly revealed. However, a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council obtained these videos that were taken during the field surveys.

Mounted on the front of vibroseis trucks, the video cameras captured scenes of the trucks moving through the landscape, knocking down everything that stood in their way. The trucks were not, however, supposed to take down trees 4 inches or greater in diameter.

Some portions of the videos also show the deep ruts the trucks left in their wake. They do not show, however, whether any mitigation of impacts occurred “immediately as the survey continues” as the National Park Service required.

And, according to the NRDC, Burnett crews also failed to get their equipment out of the preserve before the rainy season arrived. As a result, “As oil company workers drove the vibroseis trucks through standing water, hydraulic fluid leaked into wetlands," noted NRDC Senior Attorney Alison Kelly. "The company also left trash, debris, and portable toilets behind in standing water.”

Burnett Oil could, in theory, survey about one-third of the preserve in its search for energy reserves.

Big Cypress sprawls across more than 720,000 acres of Big Cypress Swamp in south Florida, protecting not only its flora and fauna but also the steady flow of freshwater that nourishes the "river of grass" that is synonymous with the Everglades. Big Cypress and Big Thicket National Preserve in Texas were the first of the National Park System's "preserves," landscapes that, while within the system, are not as protected as "national parks." Hunting and oil development are both permitted within preserves, albeit under Park Service approval and oversight.

Instead of conducting an Environmental Impact Statement on the testing, an exhaustive document that would closely examine how wildlife and vegetation might be impacted by the surveying work, Big Cypress staff wrote a less stringent Environmental Assessment to examine Burnett Oil's plans.

Big Cypress National Preserve was transferred to the federal government in 1974. At that time, many of the minerals (namely, oil) located beneath the preserve remained privately held. However, the federal government has the authority and responsibility to regulate the exploration and extraction of privately-owned minerals, and may limit surface access to protect the ecological integrity of the Preserve.