A BLM oil and gas leasing proposal for Utah could impact places such as Hatch Canyon and have indirect impacts on national parks/Ray Bloxham, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which works "to make energy development on public lands easier," should not ignore business sense, or its overall mission, along the way.

The agency's mission is clearcut: ... to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.

But politics can greatly influence, and even override, that mission, as demonstrated by President Trump's maneuver -- still being litigated in court -- to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. 

The BLM's move to offer more than 110,000 acres in southeastern Utah later this year for oil and gas leasing is folly that erodes the veracity of the agency's mission statement.

Utah's Scenery Holds More Value Than Oil Or Natural Gas

As Traveler pointed out Sunday in a story on the lease proposal, oil and gas production from public lands in the Beehive State returns less than a quarter to the state's economy than does the tourism draw of Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef national parks. ($98.3 million vs. $420.8 million). On top of that, Utah's known oil and gas reserves combined are a single digit fraction (1.6 percent) of known reserves in the country, and as a whole the country in 2019 produced more energy than it consumed. Furthermore, the environmental assessment prepared for this lease sale notes that oil production from the state is expected to decrease 0.3 percent per year in the coming years, while natural gas production is expected to increase 0.1 percent per year.

Considering those facts, and the fact that about 1 million of the 2.6 million acres already leased in the state have not been developed by the industry, the BLM in Utah should be focused on helping the public gain enjoyment from those lands rather than enabling activities that strike at their beauty and environmental, ecological, and cultural integrity. Instead the agency is reacting to requests from entities to produce expensive environmental assessments on the suitability of the lands for leasing, regardless of whether those entities actually intend, or have the financial capabilities, to act on leases put up for auction.

If the BLM approached its mission holistically, considering the 12 states that contain the bulk of the 247.3 million acres it oversees in its entirety, wouldn't it focus its oil and gas leasing in regions with greater known reserves and concentrate on sustaining and protecting the health, cultural, and recreational values of lands such as those in Utah being placed at risk from this lease proposal?

Some of the lands in the current leasing proposal capture amazing vignettes of Southwestern wilderness that offer not only recreational outlets but might hold cultural keys to ancient civilizations. While it's true that none of the parcels the BLM plans to offer in its September lease auction lies within a national park, some are within a handful of miles of parks and, if developed, could be seen and heard from within parks.

Land And Air Impacts

Energy development impacts not only physical landscapes, but also air quality, including the air quality of national parks, which by law are supposed to have the best air quality in the nation.

Sadly, that goal seems unattainable at the time. A 2019 report from the National Parks Conservation Association stated that 96 percent of the National Park System has air quality problems. That's clearly evident at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border. Oil and gas development in the Uinta Basin of Utah to the west of Dinosaur pollutes the park's air to the point where human health at times is at risk.

Last December the Environmental Protect Agency stated that, "Ozone levels in the Uinta Basin, particularly in the winter months, have exceeded Clean Air Act standards several times in recent years. On August 3, 2018, the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah was designated as a nonattainment area for the 2015 8-hour ozone standard. EPA estimates that existing oil and natural gas operations account for approximately 98 percent of volatile organic compound emissions in the basin."

Air quality records from 2017 (most recent available) note that ozone levels in Dinosaur were rated as poor and a threat to human health. Overall air quality was rated as fair, and visibility and haze also were reported as fair. Nitrogen deposition was rated as poor in the park, too.

The analysis contained in the BLM's lease proposal notes that actually leasing tracts would have no impact on air quality ... until those leases are developed. And since the lease proposal "does not authorize or guarantee the number of wells," the potential outcome won't be known until the leases are sold and the energy companies apply for drilling permits.

At that point, "(A)dditional analysis or mitigation may be required when parcels are developed to ensure no adverse impacts occur," the EA states.

So incredible and unique is the landscape in question that nearly a century ago, in 1936, then Interior Secretary Harold Ickes proposed protecting nearly 4.5 million acres -- an area roughly twice the size of Yellowstone National Park -- as Escalante National Monument. Stewart Udall, President John Kennedy's Interior secretary, proposed a million-acre Canyonlands National Park. Today the park covers a little less than 340,000 acres, and there continue to be cries to protect "Greater Canyonlands" by adding to the existing park.

While the National Park System was established to protect, conserve, and interpret the country's most unique landscapes and points of history, the system in turn at times needs to be protected from outside activities. Perhaps Congress needs to pass a law -- let's call it the Healthy Public Lands Act of 2020 -- that would allow groups and individuals to nominate BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands to be protected from oil and gas development.