The Obama Administration is acting quickly to save America’s public lands from oil and gas drilling, a policy change signaled early this month with the announcement from the U.S. Department of the Interior, now under the leadership of former Colorado U.S. Senator Ken Salazar, that 77 Bureau of Land Management leases issued in the last days of the Bush Administration would be canceled.

Those 77 leases – roughly 100,000 acres – included parcels near Utah’s famed Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon, places described by environmental activist Robert Redford as some of the “last pristine places on earth.”

The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah (roughly 42 percent of the state). Located mostly in western and southeastern Utah, the topography ranging from rolling uplands to sprawling desert lowlands, these public lands are chronically vulnerable to possible auction of subsurface rights for oil and gas drilling.

The parcel offerings in the BLM Resource Management Plan lead to the approval of lease auctions; RMPs are approved, for the most part, one per state every one or two years.

So when late last year an unprecedented number of six RMPs were rammed through the BLM’s Utah office’s approval process in a matter of weeks, alarms were sounded.

The ensuing controversy and protest took some interesting turns, soon gaining national and then international momentum as nearly 20,000 letters voicing outrage flooded media outlets, state government and BLM offices.

Some letter-writers and environmental organizations charged that the BLM was acting on “orders from the Bush Administration” to steamroller an auction that would bequeath “a Bush legacy” to the oil and gas industry, criticizing the rush to lease as everything from a “parting shot” to a “fire sale.”

The BLM maintained on its website, however, that its eleventh-hour auction did not deviate from the rules, but rather fit into the department’s mandate to conduct lease sales on an at-least-quarterly basis, in keeping with the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 authorizing oil-and-gas lease sales on BLM lands, of industry-nominated land parcels.

The BLM website further maintained that “the upcoming sale is not a last-minute effort to allow for oil and gas development on public lands prior to an administration change” and that “quarterly oil and gas lease sales are never ‘thrown together.’ 

“Preparing for a lease sale requires a significant amount of time and extensive analysis and evaluation,” it stated.

 

National Park Service Weighs In

In response to the wave of protest, a BLM representative soon responded: “We will only review letters which show that our plan was based on faulty policy information or that a piece of research in regard to a parcel hasn’t been completed.”

That response, in the opinion of Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney David Garbett, could be interpreted thusly: “They only respond to letters or issues which could lead to litigation.”

The BLM response, Garbett contended, further underscored “a failure on their part,” prior to the closing days of the Bush Administration, to fully examine the legalities of its subsurface mineral leases.

“They overlooked so many things,” Garbett charged. “They didn’t look in detail at each parcel; they didn’t do documentation, or review the lands around each parcel.”

SUWA and Red Rock Forests, the Moab environmental nonprofit organization, as well as a group of concerned citizens, held public meetings for drafting letters that focused on the BLM’s lack of review of everything from recreation-economy impacts to air-quality issues.

“The BLM’s own monitors are showing a violation of air quality standards in some of these areas even before any new development,” Garbett contended.

That fact, along with “the strong public outcry,” served to “strengthen the National Park Service’s position” that a “review of the entire process” was called for.

Town of Moab and Grand County officials joined in formal protest, both citing especial concern regarding parcels located directly on top of Moab’s primary water source. 

Utah-based National Park Service officials, made aware of what parcels were up for auction only a few weeks before the sale, weighed in, calling the move “shocking and disturbing” and voicing alarm that their agency had not been properly notified.  

The result was negotiations between the BLM and the Park Service, resulting in the BLM’S removal from the sale of a few of parcels directly adjacent to national parks and monuments.

On Dec. 17, 2008, SUWA, joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Wilderness Society, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, filed as plaintiffs in a suit against the Interior Department.

In a press release, SUWA announced it would continue with the suit, despite the 77 lease cancellations, “to address the larger issue of the RMPs that remain in place in Utah.”  Cancellation of the 77 leases was a critical first step, but the problem would come up again, organizers maintained, unless problems in the RMP process were addressed. Paramount among the problems: The BLM’s “failure to address air pollution and climate change, failure to protect cultural resources, and failure to limit damage from off-road vehicle use.”

A Student Protest

Enter Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student who, on Dec. 19, fraudulently bid in the auction on $1.8 million in leases. His unpredicted and unconventional actions created a swirl of confusion and controversy. Some hailed him as a modern Hayduke, although some environmental organizations voiced alarm at what he had done. Stated SUWA’s Garbett: “We try to engage in the public process in a way that is legal and aboveboard; we don’t condone behavior that is illegal. 

“We followed the legal process and have seen benefits of those results,” Garbett continued. “We have been here since the mid 1980s, and if we were to practice things of that nature, and condone that type of behavior,” that DeChristopher exhibited, “we wouldn’t have any credibility. We couldn’t build the relationships we need.”

DeChristopher maintained, however, that his action was necessary.

“You see how much big enviros are uncomfortable with grassroots and do not support it,” he said. “Their position is to ‘let the professionals handle this.’

Others contend that DeChristopher’s protest garnered more national media attention, spurring key Obama advisor John Podesta to announce prematurely on Fox News that the last-minute lease sales might be reversed once Obama took office on Jan. 20.

In recent weeks, DeChristopher has toured Utah, delivering speeches and meeting with individuals who want to talk about his actions and the effect they had on the BLM auction-RMP process.

“I had really prepared myself for the worst. I was thinking three to five years in prison, that's what I'm looking at,” DeChristopher said in an interview last week. “Now,” he allowed, “things are looking more positive."

 

‘A National Disgrace’

During the Dec. 18 auction, protesters from Moab and Grand County organizations, Red Rock Forests and others braved freezing weather to stand outside BLM offices in Salt Lake City in an effort to draw attention to what they felt to be a “national disgrace.” Red Rock Forests Executive Director Terry Shepherd was one attendee who came with a laundry list of issues to be addressed before any more parcels were offered for leasing.

Echoing SUWA’s dismay at the existing RMP process, she suggested it needed a complete overhaul, calling – as a first step – for “complete transparency” in the process of parcel selection.  

“Local economy is everything,” Shepherd said, adding that a range of elements, including recreation, amenities, economy and viewscapes, should be given equal weight to oil and gas development potential, when policymaking. Like many environmental-organization representatives, Shepard called for a plan that includes working toward renewable sources of energy.

In response to the suit filed by SUWA and other organizations, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., granted a temporary restraining order to prevent oil and gas companies from taking possession of leases they had purchased Dec. 19, going on to tell The New York Times on Jan. 18 that the Interior Department had not done sufficient environmental analysis for the RMPs, particularly wit regard to how air quality might be degraded.

Now, of course, Colorado’s own Ken Salazar, the newly appointed Secretary of the Interior, has taken significant action. In a formal statement released by the White House, Salazar reflected on his department’s rapid remand of the Bush Administration’s last-minute oil-and-gas behests. 

“In its last weeks in office,” charged Salazar, the former State of Colorado attorney general, “the Bush Administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes in Utah.

“We need to responsibly develop our oil and gas supplies to help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we must do so in a thoughtful and balanced way that allows us to protect our signature landscapes and cultural resources in places like Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon, for future generations.”

To that end, he continued: “I have directed Bureau of Land Management not to accept the bids on 77 parcels from the Dec. 19 lease sale … in close proximity to these national parks, monuments, and sensitive landscapes. 

“We will take a fresh look at these 77 parcels and at the adequacy of the environmental review and analysis that led to their being offered for oil and gas development.  I am also concerned that there was inadequate consultation with other agencies, including the National Park Service.”

Just this week, the BLM announced the revocation of roughly one-third of the eleventh-hour oil-and-gas lease sales in the State of Colorado, in San Miguel County.