Some of the most dazzling geology can be found in Canyonlands National Park, and other national parks in southern Utah/Kurt Repanshek file

Some of the most spectacular national park lands can be found on the Colorado Plateau in Utah. Parks literally etched and eroded out of sandstones hued burnt orange, vanilla, umber, and rouge, and cleaved by one of the continent's most venerable and historic rivers. 

But there's also believed to be oil and natural gas beneath this ruddy landscape, and the two federal land-management agencies tasked with managing these natural resources -- one iconic for its beauty, the other prized for its energy -- struggle to mesh their managerial philosophies even though they're sister agencies within the Interior Department.

That was evident near the end of President George W. Bush's second term when his administration proposed more than 350,000 Bureau of Land Management acres, split into 77 parcels, for oil and gas leases, including some surrounding Arches and Canyonlands national parks and near Dinosaur National Monument, and yet the BLM didn't confer in advance with the National Park Service.

Come forward to 2020 and the BLM again is proposing an auction of natural gas and oil leases in Utah, and while the two agencies reportedly have discussed the parcels in play, environmental groups point out that some of the leases, if acted on, could impact the national park experience sought by visitors and also adversely impact park resources. It's almost as if the BLM took a blind eye to the national park lands that fall near the parcels in play, they say.

"You can take your mission seriously and look at the impacts of your activities on the park resources and the park experiences, or you can pretend that you can virtually go to that border, turn your back, and make your decision," said Nada Culver, vice president, public lands, and senior policy counsel for the National Audubon Society. 

Pointing to Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef national parks, Dead Horse State Park, the remnants of Bears Ears National Monument created by President Obama and dismantled by President Trump, and the Green and Colorado rivers' dancing waters and magical canyons they've carved, Culver said the BLM proposal places "a potpourri of good places at risk.”

“Some of these lands have wilderness characteristics, they are kind of untrammeled areas that people really enjoy," she said of some of the areas that could be impacted if the leases are sold. "Some of those are in areas around Labyrinth Canyon and Hatch Canyon, for example, that are spectacular, to say the least."

That the BLM will put more than 110,000 acres, ironically also divided into 77 parcels, out for lease in September is curious on several fronts, and not just because active exploration could mar national parks.

• The oil and gas industry nationally is sitting idle on nearly 10,000 drilling permits for public lands.
• Utah's known oil reserves represent 0.9 percent of known national reserves.
• Utah's known natural gas reserves represent 0.7 percent of known national reserves.
• Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef national parks combined had a $420.8 million impact on Utah's economy in 2019.
• Oil and gas production revenues from federal lands in Utah in 2019 amounted to $98.3 million.

From a cost-benefit analysis, those numbers indicate that national parks are much more valuable than oil and gas in Utah. But politics can be distorting.

“What we saw at the end of the Bush administration and the 77 parcels that were offered, in a similar landscape in the Moab area and around Dinosaur, really led to protest and controversy from the environmental community that there needed to be some sort of reform to how and where oil and gas leasing development was taken place," said Erika Pollard, associate director of the National Parks Conservation Association's Southwest Region. "There was some reform that happened under the Obama administration. They took a step back, implemented master leasing plans, which were supposed to be a way of taking a closer look at some of these sensitive landscapes around protected areas and looking more closely at where and how leasing should take place.

"That is something that the current administration immediately got rid of, and immediately entered into this energy dominance agenda where they were trying to make it as easy as possible and as quick as possible for industry to lease public land and develop it for oil and gas," she said.

A Bureau of Land Management proposal could place more pumpjacks, such as these near Canyonlands National Park, on lands near national parks in Utah/Rebecca Latson file

Bill McKibben, a nationally known environmentalist and journalist, recently examined the BLM's upcoming lease auction in an article for The New Yorker. In it he pointed out that the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 lets people nominate lands for energy development. He went on to write, "The law itself is a crime -- a gift to the oil and gas industry. It awards the industry chunks of federal land through a process designed to move real estate out of public control as easily as possible.”

To McKibben's point, the leasing act does "move real estate out of public control."

“Some leases are just held and do not end up being developed," Pollard pointed out. "When they offer a lease, it’s a ten-year lease, and so you’re essentially locking that landscape up, whether they develop it or not, for a single use on the land.

“That actually happens quite often, when companies will purchase the leases and then never develop them," she added. "Is that the best use for these lands, especially when you’re looking at a landscape like Moab, where there are so many other uses that happened out there? To lock it up for a single use really just goes against what the BLM is really supposed to be doing with multiple use."

According to a March 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office, there are a variety of reasons why leases might lie inactive:

• Some operators may obtain permits simply to increase the value of the company without actually drilling.
• Stipulations attached to lease permits, such as to protect wildlife or cultural resources, might discourage leaseholders from drilling.
• One operator told GAO that that because the federal permitting process takes so long, the company has to project far into the future and thus is more likely to have approved drilling permits that ultimately go unused.
• The permitting process associated with developing federal oil and gas resources is more time-consuming than for state- or privately owned oil and gas resources. One operator said that, given the chance to apply for drilling permits for similar mineral resources on either state or federal lands, they would choose the state lands.
• Most operators GAO spoke with stated that they kept some unused drilling permits on hand to ensure drill rigs were kept busy, and one operator said that having several drilling permits was useful to provide operators with options.

Culver shakes her head at the BLM's approach under the Trump administration for managing lands that are to be used for more than just energy development.

“We have half the permits (issued across the nation) being unused, we have more than half of the leased acreage in Utah is not in production already, and we have SITLA (Utah's Trust Lands Administration) canceling lease sales (on state lands), BLM putting lease sales on hold," she said. "Is this really the best use of the BLM’s resources, to find yet more land to lease that is currently in such a condition that it can meet the standards of wilderness? Is that really the land we need to go after? That’s going to affect the national parks and this value of beautiful places, beautiful experiences, intact ecosystems. Do we really need to do this?”

The upcoming lease proposal includes one parcel that lies on the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, another five miles from Capitol Reef National Park and adjacent to the Lower Last Chance Wilderness Area, and some other sites that if acted on the operations could be seen and heard by visitors to Canyonlands National Park. Concerns have been voiced that river runners in Labyrinth Canyon, a wild and scenic section of the Green River upstream of Canyonlands, could see drilling operations that could also lead to river contamination.

"Labyrinth Canyon was named by John Wesley Powell during his 1869 expedition for its meandering course. The canyon is a geologic wonderland with canyon walls composed of layered sandstone," the Outdoor Alliance wrote in its comments to the leasing proposal. "Below Labyrinth Canyon, Stillwater Canyon winds through Canyonlands National Park. Amazing rock formations and scenery on a grand scale, along with ruins and rock art sites, provide plenty of opportunities for exploration."

Since the Trump administration came into office in 2017, it has put up roughly 26 million acres for lease, and 5-6 million acres have been sold, according to Culver.

"We have a system where the BLM is spending all this time finding lands to put up for lease, and they’re not making the best use of their own time because obviously that’s not a good ratio of numbers," she said. "Roughly a quarter of lands put up for lease are selling?"

Shouldn't the BLM spend more of its time inspecting well sites and tending to its other responsibities instead of spending time and money (the upcoming lease proposal cost the agency $179,143.50 to prepare) on lease auctions with such a low rate of return, questioned Culver.

Pollard, when asked about McKibben's claim that the Mineral Leasing Act that governs the BLM's leasing programs is "a crime," shared his outrage.

"Anybody could go out and submit an expression of interest to the Bureau of Land Management, they can even do anonymous expressions of interest, where you don’t know who exactly is submitting that request," she said. "And then under the current administration, they will look at each one of those requests and for the most part they have been moving forward with the majority of these expressions of interest that are coming in from industry.

“It’s really frustrating to see that there can be one small company nominating a significant portion of the public lands right outside of our national parks and really gaining control of what happens on that land for a minimum of ten years, and then to be able to move forward and develop those and create all sorts of other impacts to these places.”

According to the NPCA official, a majority of the leases in the September auction are in the BLM's Moab District, "literally within a half-mile of Canyonlands, within several miles of Arches, along the Green River, which obviously feeds into Canyonlands and is an important water source."

"So we’re seeing this unrelenting interest from industry and the willingness from the Bureau of Land Management to offer these leases,” she said.

It doesn't have to be that way, Culver said. There's no hard requirement that BLM has to process a request in six months, and they don't even need to approve a request, the Audubon official said.

“The Mineral Leasing Act ... says that they’re supposed to be leasing lands that are known or likely to have oil and gas resources. That seems to be missing completely from this analysis," she said.

Utah BLM staff said that "(T)hrough years of practice, and implementation of policies, regulations, and laws, the BLM has a time-tested process for offering oil and gas lease sales, which we are required by law to conduct, in a way that ensures that resources remain protected."

Furthermore, regarding the national parks in the leasing area, they said "recreational areas are evaluated in the environmental review process."

While the National Park Service did consult with the BLM on the leasing proposal, exactly what concerns it raised are unknown. Park Service personnel in the agency's Intermountain Region office said it was up to the BLM to provide the Traveler with those comments, and the BLM deflected several requests, replying simply that, "Utah BLM coordinated with the National Park Service regarding the environmental assessment for the September oil and gas lease sale. We value the input offered from all of our cooperating agencies when working on an environmental review."

Read the leasing document and comment at this site. Comments are being taken through July 9.

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