Trump Fracking Plan for Chaco Park Site Stokes Tribal Conflicts

The Trump administration’s expected rollback of an oil and gas drilling ban around New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon is pitting tribes and environmental groups against each other as they prepare for possible legal challenges.

The Bureau of Land Management on Oct. 30 began the process of reversing the Biden administration’s ban on oil and gas drilling within a 10-mile radius of Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwest New Mexico’s oil and gas-rich San Juan Basin, according to a notice the Interior Department sent to nearby Acoma Pueblo tribal officials.

The Navajo Nation, which borders the park, supports drilling in part because oil royalties help support some of its residents. But many other surrounding tribes and environmental groups opposed to fossil fuels want fracking around Chaco Canyon to be banned as the Trump administration races ahead to develop such resources nationwide.

The bureau will give the public 14 days to comment on its proposal, according to the document, which kicked off a tribal consultation period with Acoma Pueblo—a tribe south of Chaco Canyon.

Though the bureau is proposing to fully revoke the ban, the notice said it will also consider two other options for drilling around Chaco: Maintaining the ban within a 5-mile zone, or keeping the 10-mile ban in place. The Interior Department declined to comment.

“Our primary goal is to protect the landscape that has some really irreplaceable cultural resources,” said Aaron Sims, an attorney at Chestnut Law Offices PA in Albuquerque who represents Acoma Pueblo.

For tribes, “Chaco is really a piece of their ancestral homeland,” Sims said.

‘In the Dark’

Chaco Canyon, a United Nations World Heritage Site protected within the park, is considered sacred by many Southwestern tribes because it was an ancient hub of trade in a region that now includes Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.

The BLM in 2014 began amending a development plan for its land around Chaco Canyon, envisioning nearly 4,000 possible oil and gas wells there. The first Trump administration tried to move ahead with that plan, but the Biden administration in 2023 banned fracking within 10 miles of the historical park.

The bureau’s move to roll back the ban is concerning because the Biden administration gave area tribes a significant voice in the process, but the Trump administration is only allowing the public to comment for two weeks, Sims said.

“We’re a little in the dark, quite honestly,” he said. “We have a lot of questions about the process. We were a bit surprised to get this notice.”

There is little precedent for reversing a Biden’s ban, and the agency’s failure to follow federal law requiring sufficient opportunities for public comment “would open the administration to legal challenges,” said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center in Taos, N.M.

Rocks at Chaco Culture National Historical Park feature ancient Pueblan petroglyphs, shown May 20, 2015.

Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

The Navajo Nation initially joined with surrounding tribes to oppose drilling around Chaco. But it changed its position in 2023, supporting efforts keep the area open to fracking. Navajo officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Oil and gas industry groups supporting drilling around Chaco, including the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, submitted public comments saying that the drilling ban would hurt the economies of communities around Chaco. Neither group responded to requests for comment.

The 10-mile ban is arbitrary and “discompassionate” toward Navajo residents who rely on oil royalties, Jim Winchester, executive director of IPANM, said in a 2023 statement.

The Navajos in January sued to lift the drilling ban in US District Court for the District of New Mexico. In the case, Navajo Nation v. US, the tribe claims Interior failed to meaningfully consult with it before banning fracking and failed to complete an environmental impact statement.

Allotments

The Navajos’ support for drilling is partly rooted in the unique land ownership around Chaco Canyon. The lawsuit calls arid northwest New Mexico economically “bleak” because it’s too dry to be farmed and 30% of residents live without electricity. The ban infringes on the rights of tribal members who live outside the reservation on “allotments” where the underlying minerals are controlled by the federal government, the lawsuit says.

Many Navajo allottees rely on oil and gas royalty payments totaling about $20,000 annually as one of their only sources of income in a region too arid to be farmed, the lawsuit says.

Land around Chaco Canyon appears on a map as an alternating checkerboard-like pattern of parcels owned by the Navajo Nation, the BLM, the state, private entities, and the separate Navajo allottees.

Two other tribes intervened to defend Interior’s ban during President Joe Biden’s term, including Acoma Pueblo and Laguna Pueblo—then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s tribe.

Each tribe has its own priorities, however, and sometimes they conflict.

“We certainly respect the Navajo Nation and their sovereignty, but for us as intervenors, we really have to stand firm in protecting what we see as irreplaceable,” Sims said.

The lawsuit would be rendered moot if the Trump administration reverses the ban, but new drilling in the region would harm the Chaco landscape, Tisdel said.

“The Greater Chaco landscape is a particularly egregious location for this exploitation to occur given the generations of harm these communities have already endured and the irreplaceable cultural areas and landscapes that would be sacrificed,” he said.