- Magical thinking: Oil from shale, sands still imaginary - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

It’s appropriate that Gov. Gary Herbert, in attacking a federal proposal to restrict the amount of public land available for oil shale and tar sands mining, should accuse the Bureau of Land Management of waving a “bureaucratic magic wand.” Because all the proposed rule would do is cut back on the amount of land where people would be allowed to carry out some magical alchemy that no one yet knows how to do.
Talk about hocus-pocus. ...
... The knowledge and techniques necessary to make profitable use of those deposits, without side effects that despoil the land, consume vast amounts of scarce water supplies or do other types of unacceptable damage, are now wholly hypothetical.
If someone produces proof that such a means of extraction has been developed, one that will do minimal damage to all land and none at all to sensitive, wilderness-quality areas or endangered species, that would be a different matter altogether. And the objections from Herbert, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop and others that the administration had stopped something that would otherwise really happen might be valid.
Until that happens, it is Herbert, not the BLM, who is engaged in magical thinking.

[The Deseret News had an editorial on this today, too. They didn't like the BLM ruling. But, as far as I can see, it's not online anywhere.]

- A better way to address drilling - Denver Post Editorial

- County, let 'em drill for oil and gas - Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial

- The GOP road to nowhere - Eugene Register-Guard Editorial