The number of oil & gas leases in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico has exploded since the discovery, earlier this decade, that fracking could give drillers access to once unreachable reserves. Last year, the USGS released a new estimate that the region holds 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The previous figure, in 2003, had been 1.6 trillion. In August, BP publicized the rapid production rate of a well that had successfully penetrated these vast reserves.

With these developments, the threat that fracking poses to Chaco Canyon has mounted. Chaco, at the heart of the San Juan, is one of the most awe-inspiring and culturally significant archaeological complexes in the United States. For years, leases have been encroaching on Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, but the park protects just one portion of a landscape that is far from fully understood, and that many Native people in the region regard as sacred and ancestral. A coalition of local residents and organizations that has been battling energy companies and a feckless arm of the BLM has won some victories, but faces more challenges as Ryan Zinke works to accelerate drilling on public lands.

I was struck by the sheer brazenness of an energy company spokesman quoted near the end of this piece from today’s Guardian:

The archaeological workarounds are, he says, “just a cost of doing business, and our eyes are very open to that.” “The argument for and against development is exactly the same, and it’s about history,” he says. On one side, people want to preserve their past, and on the other, families now have a tradition of working with oil and gas companies.

The “tradition” of “working with” (that seems suspiciously euphemistic) oil and gas companies goes back less than a century. Meanwhile, the past that is threatened by increased and more invasive drilling involves 1,200 years or more.