An oil company is moving ahead to obtain permits to drill for oil in Big Cypress National Preserve/NPS file

An oil company that in 2017 and 2018 did seismic testing in a search for oil at Big Cypress National Preserve has applied for Florida permits to construct well pads and access roads in the preserve, a precursor to additional permitting that could allow the company to drill there.

Burnett Oil Co. filed the initial permitting applications on January 22. However, even if the state approved those requests the company would still need an environmental resource permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and an access permit from the National Park Service before it could commence drilling.

Pedro Ramos, superintendent of Everglades National Park to whom Big Cypress Superintendent Tom Forsyth reports to, declined to discuss the matter, and Forsyth did not immediately respond to questions pertaining to the project, which reportedly calls for two pads and access roads up to 33 feet wide and approximately 1.5 miles long.

Officials from the National Parks Conservation Association and Natural Resources Defense Council were drafting a press release Tuesday evening and had no immediate comment.

Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, was greatly concerned by the company's move. He said Forsyth told him earlier Tuesday that there were two pads involved, and each would have several wells.

"This is coming as no surprise that Burnett is doing this," Schwartz said during a phone call Tuesday evening. "I'm extremely disappointed that they're moving forward on this. I'm very curious to see how the Biden administration responds, since they just recently put out a statement regarding a moratorium on oil and gas projects on federal lands. The problem here is that although the land is federally owned, these are not federal oil rights. They're privately owned by the Collier family. A split estate."

The National Park Service owns the surface of the more than 720,000-acre preserve, while the mineral rights are privately owned – energy exploration and possible development were allowed in the enabling legislation that in 1974 made Big Cypress the country’s first national preserve, and indeed there is ongoing oil production in some areas of the preserve.

Still, it's an incredible landscape. This is an ecosystem with rare woodpeckers that live in family groups, with youngsters helping to raise their siblings. A subspecies of panther (listed as an endangered species more than five decades ago) has tenaciously survived despite the steady urbanization of Florida. More than 30 species of orchids grow in Big Cypress, perhaps most notable among them the ghost orchid that snakes its roots around the trunk of its host tree, anchoring its beautiful flowers. And there is the Everglades dwarf siren, a curious, bushy-gilled salamander that can grow up to 10 inches long.

Wood storks, an endangered species, have habitat in Big Cypress, as do the red-cockaded woodpecker (endangered), the Everglade snail kite (endangered), Audubon’s Crested Caracara (threatened), the Eastern Indigo snake (threatened), and the American alligator (threatened). The preserve also provides important habitat to numerous other rare and federally endangered species of plants, birds, bats, and butterflies. The state of Florida, meanwhile, lists nearly 70 plant species within Big Cypress as endangered, and if you include threatened species, the state’s tally reaches 100 for the preserve.

Schwartz said the pad locations are along the Sunniland Oil Trend, which the Collier Company says is "a well-defined, onshore oil reserve stretching from Fort Myers to Miami" and which runs through the national preserve. Since oil was first discovered in that formation in 1943, "eight commercial oil fields have produced more than 120 million barrels of oil at some of the highest onshore per-well flow rates in the country," the company notes on its website.

Kevin Vermillion, who applied for the state permits for Burnett, did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday. 

In supporting documents Burnett filed in seeking the state 404 environmental permit, the oil company said it was proposing to use directional drilling (aka horizontal drilling) to tap oil reserves discovered during the past semismic testing. The company's proposed road alignment to the pad seeks to avoid impacting habitat used by state- and federally-listed floral and faunal species, the document said. Overall, the project proposal "is designed to avoid significantly degrading" Big Cypress, it added.

"A public benefit is provided relative to long-term wetland functions within the drainage basin because the applicant is mitigating for wetland impacts as if the impacts were permanent, in addition to the applicant removing the wellpad and road fill at the termination of oil production activities and restoring the native habitats within the project footprint," the company said. "This amounts to the applicant mitigating twice for the same wetland impacts, albeit over an extended timeframe."

Park Service staff was working with Burnett to come up with an acceptible mitigation plan, the document added.

Past Traveler stories pertaining to this project include:

Mixing Oil And Water At Big Cypress National Preserve

Army Corps Finds Big Cypress National Preserve Oil Exploration Caused Adverse Impacts

Army Corps Reverses Position On Oil Company's Impacts On Big Cypress National Preserve

Groups Want Florida To Purchase Big Cypress National Preserve Mineral Rights