The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Utah state office has delayed completing the sale of all 31 of the oil and natural gas lease parcels won by bidders at auction Tuesday pending additional reviews.

In its scheduled quarterly competitive lease sale held in Salt Lake City, BLM had 42 parcels on 53,800 acres available for bid that are managed by the agency’s three Utah field offices in Fillmore, Price and Vernal. The auction resulted in 31 parcels being won for $1.3 million, according to BLM.

Megan Crandall, a spokeswoman for BLM’s Utah office, told NGI that the lease sale was not “suspended” but rather the results will be delayed until additional reviews are conducted by federal officials.

“We’ve only delayed the results while we resolve the protests,” Crandall said. “It’s not unusual to withdraw the results or delay awarding the leases if there are protests. This is actually one of the first lease sales BLM has conducted in seven years that hadn’t been heavily protested.”

Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, agreed that BLM’s decision to delay completion of the sale was standard operating procedure when there are protests. “It’s a pretty normal procedure for there to be protests. It usually takes a couple of months for BLM to clear the protests on any given lease,” she said.

Asked why BLM didn’t wait to resolve the protests before holding the Utah lease sale, Sgamma said there would never be a lease sale if that procedure were followed.

She noted that all of the oil and gas lease sales last year in the Intermountain West, which includes Utah, were protested. So producers have become accustomed to the protests, according to Sgamma. “As a nation, however, we should be alarmed that there are groups that protest every lease sale.”

Protests were filed by two environmental groups, the Denver-based Center for Native Ecosystems and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). However, the protests were filed with BLM after the official comment period had ended, said Crandall. Still the leaseholders have to comply with all applicable laws, and Crandall said it was easier for BLM to delay awarding the parcels to resolve the protests.

TRCP spokesman Joe Webster told NGI that his group had followed BLM’s procedures for lease protests, which is to submit a protest at least 15 days prior to the auction. TRCP determined that additional planning was needed to ensure that “impacts to big game and sage grouse would be minimized,” he said.

“The BLM originally concluded that our protest was filed late and then today [Tuesday] realized that they made a mistake,” Webster said. “It is a BLM error that is resulting in the suspended leases. They had our protest 15 days prior…and could have had this all determined on time if they would have followed standard operating procedures.

“We support responsible energy development,” said Webster. “We protested these parcels because the BLM hadn’t done enough to minimize impacts during the development stage. Protesting is the only mechanism we have to comment on lease sales.”

The review process could take two months or longer, Crandall said. BLM won’t conduct an environmental assessment or redo the extensive environmental impact statements because those already have been completed, she noted. Instead, federal officials will review the protests and see if there are any additional issues that need to be addressed.

Earlier this month a report issued by the Interior Department called for an expeditious review of the 77 parcels in Utah, which were auctioned in December and then later withdrawn, to determine whether they should be reoffered to producers for oil and natural gas development (see Daily GPI, June 12). Interior recommended that reinstatement of certain leases may be appropriate following the review.

Under BLM’s rules, bidders still would have to pay for the parcels they purchased on Tuesday, although the leases won’t be issued until the protests are resolved.

BLM’s Utah office originally said 92 parcels on 141,568 acres of public land were considered for this week’s lease sale. By mid-April officials had whittled the auction to 67 parcels on 90,311 acres.

On June 16 BLM’s Kent Hoffman, deputy director of lands and minerals in Utah, said he had decided to offer 53,821.08 acres on 42 parcels with “appropriate conditions and stipulations.”

“All of the parcels have been reviewed to determine if existing planning and NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] documents adequately address the issues and environmental consequences of leasing at this time,” Hoffman said earlier this month. “My decision to offer parcels in the Price and Vernal Field Offices is based on the findings and recommendations made in the relevant field offices’ determinations of NEPA adequacy, as modified by recommendations made by the Utah State Office Energy support team.”

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