Will court's ruling slow oil, gas lease?
Critics accuse BLM of selling off wilds quality land parcels
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball said that the BLM in Utah violated the National Environmental Policy Act by not considering new information about the wilderness values and characteristics of 16 lease tracts offered in a February 2005 sale. The tracts were not in wilderness areas, and the state and the Department of Interior had agreed in April 2003 that there would be no further BLM wilderness designations in Utah.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Wilderness Society. Those groups celebrated Kimball's ruling.
"This decision is reverberating loudly throughout the West because in Colorado and other states, the BLM also has controversially sold off land that the agency itself had acknowledged was wilderness quality," said Suzanne Jones, director of The Wilderness Society's Four Corners Office in Denver.
She added in a press release that the ruling is "a clear message that BLM needs to rein in its illegal leasing practices."
"We've been reviewing the decision with our solicitors and determining what steps we will take," she said. "We cannot say at this time if this is going to affect the August sale or not."
For that sale, 334,000 acres on 216 parcels were originally to be offered for leasing. However, the agency routinely goes through protests and decides whether some parcels will be deferred from leasing.
During a protest period that ended Monday, five challenges were filed concerning 53 of the parcels, she said.
A final decision on which tracts to offer in the quarterly lease sale hasn't been made yet. Typically, the final list is announced seven days before the sale. But that timing could change.
"That may vary because of the (Kimball) decision, though," Babbitt said. Possibly, the BLM will "take a little bit longer to announce if any tracts will be deferred."
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
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