No drilling on Utah public lands

In a clear signal that the Obama administration is shifting the government's approach to energy exploration on public lands, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday canceled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land after opponents said the drilling would blight Utah's scenic southeastern corner.

Salazar's decision -- which reverses the Bush administration's move to allow drilling on about 130,000 acres near pristine areas such as Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument -- is one of a series of steps that the new administration and congressional Democrats are planning to reshape federal regulation of drilling, mining, lumbering and other resource-tapping activities, both on U.S. soil and offshore.  

"I believe, as President Obama does, that 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."

Sharon Buccino, a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council who helped challenge the recent Utah lease sales, said the decision to cancel them shows that the new administration will weigh the need for energy supplies against environmental concerns. She noted that the contested leases, if fully developed, would satisfy 0.02 percent of the nation's annual consumption of oil and 0.5 percent of its natural gas usage.

Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, said natural gas producers in Utah and the intermountain West produce more than a quarter of the country's natural gas on less than 1 percent of its public land.

 "We wonder why the administration is implementing policies that will limit economic development in the West, decrease energy security and make addressing climate change even more difficult," Sgamma said. "These lands, where vast amounts of domestic, clean energy are found, are crucial to meeting the president's energy goals of increasing energy security and tackling climate change."