Green Options » BLM

“Tug-O-War” Oil and Gas Lease Sites Must Past Tribal Test

Ruedigar Matthes — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:20 +0000

Oil and gas leases have been a hot topic for a long time, especially since the controversial disruption of a BLM land sale by student activist Tim DeChristopher in Salt Lake City this past December. The sale which, according to some, was a midnight move by the Bush administration found itself floundering when an unknown bidder (DeChristopher) won parcel after parcel of land. Since December the leased parcels have been pulled back and forth between the BLM and the Interior, between developers and nature-lovers.

This story goes back before DeChristopher, back before the rushed lease sale. Yet it shows that the tug-o-war has been going on for years; and it hasn’t stopped. When the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) recently told the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that it cannot move forward with 11 oil and gas leases without following federal cultural preservation law and consulting with concerned Native American tribes, a sigh was heard coming from Nine Mile Canyon in southern Utah.

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Dodging Development: Conservation Group Reaches an Agreement Over Leased Land

Ruedigar Matthes — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:23:57 +0000

Salt Lake City, UT - The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) announced that on May 28, 2009 an agreement was made with Equity Oil Company (”Equity”) concerning oil and gas leases on lands in Utah’s San Juan County.

The agreement “gives SUWA certainty that oil and gas development in an important part of the Hatch Point proposed wilderness area will be subject to the applicable Resource Management Plan and additional restrictions,” said Stephen Bloch, Conservation Director and Attorney for SUWA.

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Paving Wilderness: Peril in Utah’s Book Cliffs

Ruedigar Matthes — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:20:43 +0000

Utah’s Book Cliffs exist as one of the largest expanses of land in the lower 48 states without a paved highway. The BLM, however, is considering a project that would change that. Uintah County’s Seep Ridge Road Paving Project proposes paving over an existing road, which would allow greater recreational (and other, including hunting and oil and gas exploration) access. The proposal states that:

“the road is currently composed of dirt or native material and several segments of the existing road do not meet current federal and state road design standards for public safety. All projections indicate a continued substantial increase in light and heavy vehicle traffic on the road, primarily associated with energy development in the Book Cliffs area.” (UT-080-08-0238 section 1.2)

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Feds Establish New Renewable Energy Coordination Office

Timothy B. Hurst — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:08:34 +0000

Outgoing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued a Secretarial Order authorizing the Bureau of Land Management to establish offices to expedite the permitting of renewable energy and associated transmission facilities on BLM lands.

The offices will oversee the the siting and permitting of wind, solar, biomass and geothermal projects on BLM-managed lands in the American West. This process will be similar to other energy permitting work the BLM does for coal, oil and gas—like lease auctions, public meetings, comment periods and other tools of stakeholder management—except a lot less contentious.

The offices will be known as Renewable Energy Coordination Offices, and will initially be located in Arizona, California, Nevada and Wyoming.

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Utah Student Raises $45,000 to Protect Land from Drilling

Becky Striepe — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:24:46 +0000

Tim DeChristopher, the student who won over 22,000 acres of land at a Bureau of Land Management Auction, is on his way to purchasing the land, which was originally intended for sale to oil companies.

[Creative Commons photo by Wolfgang Staudt]

DeChristopher infiltrated a Bureau of Land Management auction on December 19th. Because the agency threw the auction together so hastily, he was able to get inside, grab an auction paddle and bid against the oil companies. He successfully raised the $45,000 by today in order to hold onto his claim.

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Environmental Activist Causes Chaos at BLM Utah Oil and Gas Lease Sale

Derek Markham — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:27:52 +0000

Friday’s auction of public land oil and gas leases by BLM Utah was thrown into chaos by local activist Tim DeChristopher, who bid the prices up on parcels of land he has no intention of paying for.

“I thought I could be effective by making bids, driving up prices for others and winning some bids myself.” -DeChristopher

Bidding was halted for a time, and now buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids. Kent Hoffman, deputy state director, BLM Utah, said, “He’s tainted the entire auction.”

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Christmas Energy Lease Fire Sale to Spare Land Near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks

Derek Markham — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:18:35 +0000

Public land near Arches National Park, Dinosaur Monument, and Canyonlands N.P. may get spared from a “midnight fire sale” on Friday for energy leases in Utah.

National Park Service officials have protested over some of the lease sales near the parks and monuments, resulting in deferrals for all or part of 23 parcels (37,731 acres) near national parks.

I can’t help but think that the deferral is just throwing a bone to the environmentalists to keep them quiet…

The energy lease sale in Utah puts 300,000 acres of public lands up for grabs to oil, gas, and geothermal development, including some of the West’s most environmentally sensitive areas. On the block are 132 oil and gas parcels (163,935 acres) and 44 geothermal parcels (142,333 acres) in Uintah, Carbon, Duchesne, Grand, Emery, Garfield, and San Juan counties, some of the wildest and most remote places in Utah.

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Bush Administration Proposes ‘Fire Sale’ of Rocky Mountains for Oil Shale Development

Timothy B. Hurst — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:33:46 +0000

On Tuesday, the Bush administration moved to accelerate oil-shale development across the Rocky Mountain West. Along with calls to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, and open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Tuesday’s release of proposed rules for shale exploration (pdf) by the Bureau of Land Management was merely another shot across the bow in the political blame game over $4-per-gallon gas.

The draft rules recommend reduced royalty rates for the extraction of oil from shale on 2 million acres of public property in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. While the government currently charges 12.5% to 18.8% for conventional oil drilling, oil shale development would be set at around 5%.

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BLM Reverses Solar Moratorium in 6 Western States

Max Lindberg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:52:08 +0000

The Bureau of Land Management has reversed it’s 22 month moratorium on new applications for solar power development on public lands.

In a statement issued today, the BLM said it will continue to process the applications while, “continuing to identify issues during public scoping underway for the programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).

In the statement, BLM Director James Caswell said:

“We heard the concerns expressed during the scoping period about waiting to consider new applications, and we are taking action. By continuing to accept and process new applications for solar energy projects, we will aggressively help meet growing interest in renewable energy sources, while ensuring environmental protections.”

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BLM Applying NEPA to Large Scale Solar Energy on Public Lands

Rod Adams — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:55:11 +0000

Solar energy promoters and marketers have been getting spun up in the blogosphere this past weekend based on a couple of stories that ran in the mainstream media on Friday, June 27, 2008. The frenzy of concern has been generated because the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), announced, via a press release issued on May 29 and updated on June 12 that it would be producing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate the “environmental, social, and economic impacts associated with solar energy development on BLM-managed public land in six western States: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

As described by the press release, the BLM would require about 22 months to produce the necessary studies to complete the PEIS. During that time, the Bureau would seek public comment, focus on the impacts that would result from the development of 125 applications it has in hand already, defer any new applications, and create a framework for approaches that would best allow the Bureau to mitigate the effects of an expected continued flow of applications after that study period.

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