The Western Energy Alliance asked the US Department of the Interior's Board of Land Appeals on Jan. 13 to overturn Bureau of Land Management Utah Director Juan Palma's Nov. 14, 2013, decision to defer 57 tracts from an oil and gas lease sale 5 days later.
Palma took the step after the Utah Rock Art Research Association (URARA) sent him a letter nearly 2 months after the sale's protest period had ended, the Denver-based association of independent producers said. "The group did not even bother to comment during the prescribed analysis or protest phases, two separate opportunities over several months for the public to participate," said Kathleen Sgamma, WEA's vice-president of government and public affairs.
"BLM's own policies state that it won't accept comments received after established deadlines, yet ignored the public and its own carefully crafted measures by bending to the demands of one group," she continued. WEA member companies, meanwhile, spent more than $500,000 preparing for the sale and participating in the process.
There's more to the story, however. URARA is not an arm of some national environmental group determined to stop oil and gas development, according to Diane Orr, who chairs its preservation committee. The Salt Lake City-based organization has more than 100 members who walk through Rocky Mountain desert canyons studying Native American petroglyphs and drawings that are thousands of years old, she told OGJ on Jan. 14.
"We do a lot of work for a small organization, which may be one reason we didn't respond to [this sale's] environmental assessment," Orr said. "We simply had too many projects for a limited number of people."
When URARA held its annual meeting in October, it realized BLM did not have current information about possibly significant Molen Reef area sites. Members and residents from Price, Ferron, and Castledale identified about 110 approximate locations for sites with one or more rock art panels.
'High concentration'
"This is an unusually high concentration…indicative of a culturally rich area," the group said in a Nov. 7 letter to Palma. It asked that 14 tracts be deferred.
"These are not people opposed to energy development," Orr said, adding, "But they do not want to see a significant cultural resource destroyed. About 70% of the sites we presented to Director Palma at the end of October were brought to us by local residents who favor energy development."
URARA doesn't see itself as protesting a process, but wants to continue working with BLM and providing it very sensitive information, she told OGJ.
"I think the decision to take the sites off the table was very sensible," Orr said.