Oil and Gas Drilling in Pristine Surrounds

The Bush Administration had plans to expand oil and gas drilling in Utah's wild red-rock country near Arches and Canyonlands national parks. Those plans recently hit the skids when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management is withdrawing the leases offered on 77 parcels of U.S. land. The leases are the subject of litigation in U.S. District Court.

(Salazar) “With respect to these 77 parcels we want to make sure that the process including the national park consultation and other environmental reviews are complete. It may be that out of these 130,000 acres there is a portion of it or a large part of it that ends up being subjected to a new lease sale.”

Salazar said the nation needs to develop oil and gas supplies responsibly.

(Salazar) “There has to be a balance. We know that we depend on the resources that we extract from our lands for a great part of our energy portfolio for this nation. We provide about a third of our oil and natural gas energy from our public lands that powers America’s economy. My view is that we will continue to use those resources as part of our energy portfolio as we open up new avenues to the energy frontier that we are creating and will create in the years ahead but as we move forward the conventional resources that we have used, oil, gas and coal will be part of that portfolio.”