With demand increasing and values soaring, the state Bureau of Land Management office announced Monday that it will hold its largest-ever oil and gas lease sale on May 16. The BLM plans to offer 440,000 acres on 296 parcels scattered throughout the state - but with a focus on southern Utah.
The proposed sale dwarfs the size of the agency's previous lease sale in February, and is significantly larger than the previous record offering made in September 2004.
Driving such large lease sales, BLM officials say, is an almost insatiable demand for more domestically produced energy. Since 2002, the average per-acre bid in Utah has grown from $10.25 to $113.70.
"We anticipate that people will be interested in these parcels. The industry already is interested," said Adrienne Babbitt, a BLM spokeswoman. "They've been waiting a long time for these parcels to be offered. That kind of market demand is what's driving this."
Kent Hoffman, the BLM's deputy state director of lands and minerals, calls the upcoming auction "the most closely scrutinized sale yet," because the agency had to ensure that lease offerings would not clash with ongoing land-use plans being developed in its Utah field offices.
Nearly two-thirds of the parcels being offered were pulled back from previous sales for further analysis because of protests or unresolved issues. Agency officials are calling this sale a "decisive cut" in which parcels will be offered, or held back until land-use plans are completed.
BLM officials say that the most environmentally sensitive parcels will continue to be tabled - perhaps permanently - or offered for lease with stipulations that will restrict how energy companies can explore and drill on them.
But conservation groups, which have routinely pilloried the BLM for leasing in areas that have potential wilderness, cultural or wild and scenic river characteristics, say it has not been nearly enough. One group, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, says the May lease sale may be the most egregious example of that yet.
"This confirms our worst suspicions: that the Interior Department is in the back pocket of the oil and gas industry," said Steve Bloch, a SUWA attorney. "When they call this the most scrutinized sale yet, it kind of makes you wonder what they've been doing up to this point. It's sort of a backhanded acknowledgement that they haven't scrutinized parcels as closely as they should have in the past."
Several of the most controversial parcels that the BLM has offered for lease in the past year, and later withdrawn under protest, remain off the table. BLM officials say parcels near Hovenweep National Monument, the Parowan Gap cultural area and Labyrinth Canyon along the lower Green River, will continue to be deferred until at least the end of the land-use planning process.
Another cluster of hotly debated parcels in Nine Mile Canyon also has been at least temporarily shelved, though the agency will offer seven parcels farther away from the canyon rim.
And the BLM will offer leases along the Price River, the Mussentuchit Badlands adjacent to Capitol Reef National Park and the San Rafael Desert.
Babbitt says each of those parcels will have stipulations attached.
The Price River leases require a minimum quarter-mile setback from the river; the Mussentuchit parcels cannot be accessed via park roads, and the BLM will require at least a 200-meter separation, as well as other restrictions in the San Rafael Desert offerings.
"We're trying to protect the special places, and we're confident that where we are offering leases, there are adequate stipulations in place that will protect the values that make them special," said Babbitt.
jbaird@sltrib.com
