Comments about ‘Report disputes Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's claims of 'rushed' energy leases in Utah’

The Federal Government = A state's worst enemy.

Thank you Salazar for protecting the public's interest in their public lands from local greed that would ruin our nation's natural treasures.

The oil companies are drilling just to cap off the wells and wait for the price of oil to go up. It's the oil compamies limiting the amount of oil on the market not the government.

Ken Saladczar is just as dishonest as his boss. Where do they think that oil and gas come from?

Power grabbing Salazar will have everything locked up so tight, the only way you'll be able to use public lands is by hiking 50 miles.

This is what you get when big government back east decides what's best for Western states without consulting any of the locals. (Else why would the counties feel the need to sue?)

The person who went off half-cocked was Salazar, NOT the Bush administration.

Now the truth is beginning to come out. Salazar exceeded his authority in a rush to appease radical environmental groups.

Last Stand, I guess you hate all the money the Federal Government sends to Utah.

I'm glad Salazar had the sense to slow down the process for proper study. Seventeen parcels have now been released, and luckily eight were discovered to be inappropriate before those plots could be ruined.

The counties suing the Dept. of Interior are wasting their money.

The fox is guarding the hen house. Obama and his gang of lying thieves is driving our economy into the tank. Gas prices will rise, unemployment will continue to rise, and Obama and his thugs will laugh at Republicans and Utah trying to so something that makes sense. None of these leases are anywhere near national parks. You can see, here, or smell anything from the distance these leases are from any national park. What a sham, what a bunch of lying Marxists.

tq2: Amen

Sounds like the employee was pressured into doing something afer doing nothing for seven years, they might have a case.

@Tk2: LOL

@ The Authority | 4:33 p.m. July 12, 2010
Power grabbing Salazar will have everything locked up so tight, the only way you'll be able to use public lands is by hiking 50 miles ....

Your statement is so outrageous that it makes you unbelievable !

To L @ 9:59pm

That statement by The Authority at 4:33 was not so outrageous. There are several places in the mountains near Vernal that have been open to camping and hiking forever, and are now closed, chained and locked. Our son and his family recently went to camp in an area he had camped in for most of his life, and found it has been closed.

I agree with Beowulf's comment about Eastern politicians making decisions for Western states, and not knowing what they are talking about. To many people "back East" this is just a vast wilderness area that needs to be preserved so much that no one can enjoy it. Ridiculous!

Our livelihood depends on the oil and gas production in the Uintah Basin. I know of many, many families who have lost their homes because their jobs were eliminated when drilling was curtailed here. Drilling rigs are moving to other parts of the country where they can drill. I talk to people everyday in the course of my job who are selling everything they have and moving. Hard to do when few people can afford to buy what others are selling.

Sally, the drilling was curtailed by the oil companies themselves, not the government, just as Screwdriver wrote above.

“Our livelihood depends on the oil and gas production in the Uintah Basin.”

The Uintah Basin needs to find other means of income. Oil and gas are finite resources. Anyone who works in mining a natural resource knows that at some point they will have to move — that is the miners’ lifestyle, and always has been.

Unless you own the mine or well, you go where the companies are located if you want to work in that industry.

Not rushed? When you start bypassing laws and procedures what else can you call it? I don't see any arugument in not preserving and controlling development in the wilderness areas. Beleive it or not the Eastern states still have some wilderness areas so these laws are not Western states specific.

The closure of some areas is to motorized traffic and people can still access them, just not in their vehicles and ATV's or dirt bikes. Reckless use is the problem in wilderness area's, and people have blocked that out of their minds.

Money for states is no excuse for reckless abandon and use of wilderness. We all know how concerned Eastern and foreign developers care about the western states, they have no respect for the west.

We need and must have controlled development and land use in Utah, money is not the issue, we have done well without it. We whine about excessive dependence on carbon fuels and gas and then turn around and whine because we don't use more of it. The state looks at is as a loss because greed has been stopped.

The National Park Service has always used deciption and other groups to carry their political objectives. They operate that everything adjacent to the Park is an impact, and Park boundaries extend as far as the eye can see in all direction. the Hatch should be applied..

Sally Smiles-a-Lot | 10:54 p.m.
You'll lose the right to camp there either way- one extreme will lock it up for wilderness and the other extreme will want to strip mine it for "good" $10 an hour jobs without any review or oversight.

No western say? Ignorance goes a long way in explaining some of the posts on here. Sally dear, the last 2 secretaries that have to do with oil and gas are from the west, a state that has more brains and pull than Utah----Colorado, and neither of their senators have been there for a hundred years like the mossbacks of our state. However, the one before Salazar, Norton, was a throwback to to her no brain boss, Bush. She wrote the blank check to oil and gas companies coming and going. And you see in the gulf where no control and inspection led us. Thankfully, someone is getting hold of things.

It is interesting that the BLM deviating from the long standing cooperation with the National Park Service consultation. This issue is a matter of the eye of the beholder. While there might not have been any so-called pressure on the BLM, it can be argued that the BLM went out of their way to chnage the process of leasing and keeping the National Park Service out of the review discussion process. Now for some people that would suggest a rather odd last minute change that would imply so sort of attempt at influencing the outcome of the leases being being auctioned in Utah.