Salazar defends pulling oil leases

SALT LAKE CITY — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday defended his decision to scrap much of the Bush administration's final oil-lease sale in Utah even though his inspector general found no evidence of department pressure to rush the auction.

Salazar spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff told The Associated Press that Salazar acknowledges the investigation found no evidence federal employees were ordered to speed up a sale of drilling parcels near Utah's national parks.

She said, however, that the report had no bearing on Salazar's decision to scrap 77 of the leases two months after taking office.

The 10-page report submitted by John Dupuy, the assistant inspector general for investigations, was dated Dec. 28, 2009, but wasn't released until late Monday. A copy was first sought under an open-records request by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who examined a draft in April.

The 77 leases, valued at $6.2 million, were already being held up by a federal lawsuit and Salazar wanted to take a "fresh look" at the parcels before deciding whether to release them, Barkoff said. The bidders got their money back.

Barkoff said Salazar wasn't available for comment Tuesday.

The lawsuit that blocked the release of the 77 leases around Arches and Canyonlands national parks has yet to be resolved. Environmental groups who filed suit contend the Bush administration skirted environmental laws in approving land-use plans that made the sale possible.

Salazar has criticized the auction as a rush job that threatened Utah's most magnificent landscapes, including parcels around artifact-rich Nine Mile Canyon and along the high cliffs of whitewater sections of the Green River.

Investigators found no evidence in interviews of key BLM officials or in a review of e-mails that Bush administration appointees pressured employees to rush the sale, the report said.

The report, however, faulted BLM for contributing to a perception that the sale was rushed in the month before President Barack Obama took office. It cited, among other issues, the failure to provide advance notice to the National Park Service and the agency's initial refusal to take many of the parcels close to Utah's red rock parks off the list when the Park Service objected.