Hogwash. Oil is produced in vineyards, orchards, and farms in California, proving it's safe for remote desert locations.

If you read the report, you will find that 30 of the 77 leases are in areas already producing oil and gas. The other 47 need additional study. Not as bad as your SUWA-edited headline states!

Many years ago I helped unload the pipe for the Alaska Pipeline. At that point the "Tree Huggers" got involved in delaying that one too, for 10 years, tripling the cost of the pipeline! Since then you probably have seen pictures of the Carabou crossing under, sleeping next to it and bears walking on top of the pipe! The only problem with leakage was when a drunk shot a hole it it, which was cleaned up immediately, no harm, and how many barrels have passed thorugh it over the years?

Here we have another example of Washington " X-spurts" dictating what people in the West are supposed to do. When will the East get over it "I am God" mentality and start paying attention to the people who are involved in the lands on a daily basis.

Quit telling us what to do, Washington, and ask us what needs to be done.

People talking about air quality should go from vernal to Salt Lake City and view the air quality.ours is lovely compaired to that.Something should done about that and let us from Vernal live our lives we cant even eat correctly due to the oil and gas closure.IT dont just hurt the crew members the businesses are at a loss to. people stir up this kind of junk because they have nothing else to do.

I guess "proper review" means "NO STAMP OF APPROVAL FROM THE SIERRA CLUB"!

Judging from the comments on here, I take it that conservatives don't like to conserve (nor do they like to spell correctly).

Another example of "our" government spending a lot of time & money to appease the peons, ops I mean citizens, and then producing a report to support what they had decided BEFORE they went "through the motions" of a review. Do they really think they are fooling anyone? Do they even care?

It's amazes me that people in Utah think that any oil produced in the US will bring down the cost of gas at the pump. US produced oil does not stay in the US or have any affect of gas prices. Jobs and economy are temporary windfalls. The Alaska pipeline does not benefit the american people, it is sold on the world market and we have to buy it back to convert to gas and other oil byproducts. The real fact is that it costs us, the american people, more to produce oil in the US because it does not stay in the US. First it has to be sold to oil investors and speculators then we can buy it back at inflated costs as imported oil. This rolling over of our resources is escalating costs and benefits to ridiculous profiting by oil companies.

Many of the leases given in Utah were and are planned for development, not oil production. And why are oil companies remaining mum about all this? Our land is more important than arbitrarily destroying it to fund oil profits and development.

"US produced oil does not stay in the US". Very little US oil is exported. All exports of Alaskan oil stopped in 2000.