Four parcels of federal land near Canyonlands National Park won't be hosting oil and gas rigs after all — for the time being, anyway.

The Bureau of Land Management said Tuesday it had withdrawn the parcels from a lease sale set for Aug. 16. It is also holding off on leasing another 46 parcels in areas managed by the BLM's Monticello, Moab, Richfield and Cedar City offices.

Altogether, BLM officials will offer leases on 118,035 acres scattered in 83 parcels throughout Utah, largely on BLM land but also with some parcels in Uinta National Forest and Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

The agency will delay action on another 80,231 acres that had been initially identified on the presale list because there are "too many questions from too many people" to feel comfortable about moving forward right now, said Don Banks, spokesman for the BLM's state headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Most controversial of the proposed offering are the now-withdrawn four parcels in Lockhart Basin, several miles east of Canyonlands National Park. BLM officials earlier had decided to defer on two of those, and now are pulling back on all four.

On May 16, Anthony J. Schetzsle, superintendent of the National Park Service's Southeast Utah Group, wrote to the BLM to oppose leasing there.

"All four parcels are located within the viewshed of both Canyonlands National Park and the BLM Canyon Rims Area," Schetzsle wrote.

"Both the BLM and NPS (National Park Service) manage these lands in part for this scenic quality according to our respective policies." He added that mitigation measures designed to protect desert bighorn sheep in Lockhart Basin were not resolved.

The National Park Service "requests that the subject parcels be deferred until this inconsistency with resource allocation decisions, applied visual classifications, and relevant stipulations for oil and gas lease development can be addressed in the RMP (The BLM's resource management plan) planning process," he wrote.

Contacted on Tuesday, Schetzsle noted, "The deferral does not mean that leasing will not occur in the future. All it does is provide an opportunity for future discussions."

Both the BLM and the Park Service want to have those discussions "in a manner that is for both of us considerate of our agency mission," he said.

"I think there's a way we can strike a solution that will provide for the values that this landscape holds."

Schetzsle said he wants to make it clear that the Park Service and BLM are in constant communication and discussion on such matters whenever a lease sale is proposed. "We will maintain those relationships. The same goes for our county officials, too," he said.