BLM backs off on leasing land for oil, gas rigs

Environmentalists had mounted a fierce attack on the plan to lease near Canyonlands, posting Schetzsle's letter to the BLM on the Internet and showing maps on the Web indicating places where visitors would be able to see the oil rigs.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, for example, put the issue at the top of its "Alerts and Updates" section of its Internet home page.

Scott Groene, the group's director, was happy that the BLM had backed away from leasing the four parcels at this time.

"We're pleased that some of southern Utah's beauty has been given a temporary reprieve from industrial development, and we'd like to thank the National Park Service for standing up to the Bureau of Land management," Groene said.

"But this also indicates how this administration's push for oil and gas lacks any balance and leaves wildlife habitat and wilderness at risk."

Speaking of the 50 parcels where the agency is withdrawing its offer to lease at this time, Banks said questions raised concerned wilderness related issues, the adequacy of underlying documents and cultural issues. In federal parlance, "cultural values" often refers to archaeological sites.

He also cited what he called a primary reason to defer: "We simply haven't had enough time to focus on the August sale due to completing priorities and workloads related to resolving protests we have on past sales."

Altogether, dating back to February 2004, the BLM has sold drilling rights to 339 parcels on which still-unresolved protests were filed.

For parcels, "millions of dollars" worth of leases were sold but could not be issued because of the protests, Banks said.

"It's an untenable issue for everybody involved. We need to resolve that as quickly as possible."

To do that, Banks added, the BLM has assembled a small internal task force to work through the questions on those parcels, trying to resolve the backlog. Because this was given top priority, he said, the BLM wasn't able to review Aug. 16 lease questions as thoroughly as it would have liked.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com