Utah Bureau of Land Managment Going Forward with Drilling Permit Sale
By Christian Probasco, 11-30-08
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The Utah BLM appears to be going forward with the Dec. 19 sale of oil and gas leases, some of them in the vicinity of national parks, despite objections from environmentalist groups and at least nine Democratic senators.
The Park Service objected to 45, then 93 of the parcels. After the BLM dropped 24 of them, the Park Service agreed not to oppose the sale.
U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne asking that the sale be postponed, presumably until President-elect Barack Obama could nix it. The letter was signed by eight other senators, including Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.):
“The time remaining before the December 19 lease sale is not adequate for stakeholders to analyze the likely impacts to parks in the area, particularly Arches National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and Canyonlands National Park.”
The compromise didn’t suit the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). An article in the Salt Lake Tribune quotes SUWA Conservation Director Steve Bloch as saying, “It’s still a disaster in the making. Parcels [that Park Service officials] said were important were still on [the sale list].”
On SUWA’s website, Bloch remarks, “It appears that the Park Service is being forced to accept the sale of leases that it contends will damage the air, water, and natural quiet of its parks.”
However, Mike Snyder, director of the National Park Service’s Intermountain Region, says the NPS received no pressure whatsoever from the administration to accept the sale.
SUWA also protested “six huge resource management plans (RMPs) that were finalized by the Utah BLM in October and November 2008.” SUWA referred to the plans as “fast-tracked.” In fact, the plans took an average of six years to develop. SUWA also said the plans “(rolled) back protection for wildlife, sensitive species, rivers and streams, cultural resources, and ‘areas of critical environmental concern.’” In fact, Utah’s BLM made a huge policy shift from allowing cross-country travel on most of its public lands to restricting it only to “identified” routes. The move closed an additional 1.1 million acres of Utah’s public lands to off-road travel.
The Grand Canyon Trust’s take was no less hyperbolic:
“The Bush Administration is making its expected last-minute assault on public lands with a potentially devastating sale of oil and gas leases on 360,000 acres of public land in Utah—a sale currently scheduled for December 19, 2008. IT MUST BE STOPPED!
“While we understand the Obama Adminstration plans to try to thwart or undue these leases after the fact, we must not forget that this lease sale is slated for December 19th, a month before inauguration day.”
For a point-of-view outside the “green extreme,” however, there’s Vic Suprynowicz’s Nov. 28 editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I’m Shocked, Shocked To Discover Land Use Going On Here”:
“The traveler (to a national park) does not come upon…scenic wonders immediately, because those who planned these vast impoundments understood the concept of a ‘buffer zone.’ With few exceptions, the scenic vistas are surrounded by five to 10 miles—or more—of empty space….Outside the parks and monuments, the federal government may control even vaster acreage. But those lands are turned to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which has a different mission, seeing that those less sensitive lands are used in ways that benefit the nation.”
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Comments
I believe there should be a balance between energy development on public lands with protection of other resources such as recreation or wilderness. The balance has tipped so far to the direction of energy development that we are forced to defend our lands from our own government. The "RMPs" that allow this type of development undermine our scenic and natural values by allowing leasing and energy development in some of the most beautiful and sensitive lands in the nation. They must be fixed by an Obama administration.
Mr. Probasco seems to believe the rhetoric of the BLM press releases and the one outlier columnist who seems to have not studied a map of the sale. Perhaps he should research these articles a bit more before thoroughly next time or move to a more ideologically compatible media outlet like the National Review!
And didn't our General Science teachers tell us that oil was just ancient rotten lizard corpses, and vegetation?
It doesn't surprise me at all that an organization being directed by an intellectual like Dirk Kempthorne would figure there has to be oil there...
You've completely misunderstood what Suprynowicz meant by a "buffer zone." Perhaps you should read his article.
And perhaps you should read some of my other columns before you lump me in with the 'conservatives' (?) at the National Review.
I come across the word "balance" all the time in environmental propoganda, of which I have read voluminous amounts. After watching SUWA misuse the word for a couple of decades, I'm convinced that what they mean by "balance" is: no domestic energy development whatsoever and no public access to public lands. It's time they, and you, came up with some new buzzwords.