U.S. Moves Ahead on Oil, Gas Leases on Public Land

Environmental activists said oil and gas drilling on the 210 remaining parcels could jeopardize air quality and other natural features of some of the country's most treasured national parks, such as Arches, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef, along with the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Dinosaur national monuments.

"The Bush administration started its energy policy in back rooms with oil lobbyists, and it's fitting that's how they want to end it," said Bobby McEnaney, a public lands expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. "They're destroying the whole process that is designed to protect these lands. Once you get rid of wilderness, you can't get it back."

David Garbett, a staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said that in the last month, the administration also finalized six "resource management plans" that will allow the bureau to auction off other parts of these areas in the future.

"These plans will govern management of these lands for likely the next 20 years, and these plans have made areas like this available for leasing," Garbett said. "It's a final attempt by the administration to set in stone guidance for these lands for the long term, in a way that will not protect resources."

In a statement Tuesday, the bureau's Utah state director, Selma Sierra, said her agency and the Park Service had engaged in a "constructive dialog" that "has resulted in a positive outcome" on how best to treat public lands in that state. "This is important for two sister agencies with environmental stewardship missions."

Mike Snyder, regional director for the Park Service's Intermountain Region, who negotiated with Sierra over the lease plan, said he is pleased with the decision to defer lease agreements on some parcels but still has concerns about how drilling will affect national parks.

"It's just the beginning," Snyder said in an interview Wednesday. "The resource management plans have many, many more acres that could be leased in the future."

Snyder said he had hoped that the bureau would conduct an analysis of how drilling would affect air quality in Arches, Canyonlands and other national parks that are at risk of not meeting federal ozone pollution standards, but that that will not happen. He said the 24 parcels where the BLM deferred leasing are "the really sensitive, extraordinary cases" and that the bureau will consult with the Park Service on spelling out protections in some of the parcels being auctioned off next month.

Karen Hevel-Mingo, program manager for the Southwest regional office of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the fact that the BLM has agreed only to a deferral on the two dozen leases means they could still end up on the auction block in March, when the next sale is slated to take place.

"There is concern those parcels are still available for future oil and gas development," she said.

But Sgamma said the administration spent seven years consulting with a range of interests before adopting the resource management plans that allow for drilling: "There were a lot of things industry was interested in that finally now are available for leasing."

The Obama administration could seek to reverse some of the leases, but that could prove costly. Environmentalists plan to challenge the choice of several parcels over air quality concerns, and technically the bureau has 60 days after a lease sale to determine whether it has been "improperly issued" and refund the money.

But Tim Spisak, division chief for fluid minerals for the bureau, said that for the agency to do so, "they've got to have a reason; it's not just like, somebody just thinks differently." That the government just issued the six new resource management plans, he added, makes it "less likely" that the BLM could say it has found new information that would terminate the leases.

Alternatively, the federal government could buy back the leases if the companies that won them were willing to sell. But Sgamma warned that "it would be very expensive to buy that out," adding: "Once you get a lease out, it's a contract, and you can't renege on that contract."

Database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to this report.