Confusion at lease sale over protests

A down-to-the wire decision to accept protests over the sale and lease of multiple Bureau of Land Management parcels in Utah offered up at a Tuesday auction has created some confusion, and inevitable delays, attached to the transactions.

The federal agency sold 31 of the 42 offered parcels, totaling 40,345 acres of federal land in the Fillmore, Price and Vernal areas.

During the auction, the BLM received a little more than $1.2 million in bonus bids for the federal oil and gas lease rights. In addition to the bonus bids, the sale netted nearly $61,000 in rental fees and about $4,000 in administrative fees, for $1,309,070 in total revenues from this lease sale.

Although the auction went quickly and quietly, all 42 parcels offered had protests, which BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall said is typical.

Crandall said 31 of the parcels that were sold will not be leased until the protests are resolved — a process that can be relatively simple or drag on for years.

The acceptance of the protests triggers an environmental review, but Crandall said concerns that the auction had been derailed are overblown.

"There's been no suspension, no reversal, no hijinks," she said, adding that the only aspect of the auction that deviated from the "norm" was the acceptance of late protests.

"That is absolutely unusual," she said, but a review of the concerns would ferret out any potential problems.

A similar auction in December garnered national attention after protester Tim DeChristopher bid on land he never intended to pay for. The action, carried out as a protest over land he believed was too valuable environmentally to be offered on the auction block, led to DeChristopher being charged with a pair of felonies. His case is pending in federal court.

— Amy Joi O'Donoghue