Utah

Utah air quality regulators on Tuesday reached a settlement agreement with environmentalists who had sued them over the handling of an operating permit for Tesoro Refining and Marketing Co.’s refinery in Salt Lake City, the city’s only refinery. Eventually, similar treatment could impact the state’s other four refineries.

Federal and state officials in Utah on Friday were still trying to determine exactly how much oil leaked and what environmental damage has been done, after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was notified early Wednesday of a conventional oil well that failed near Green River, UT, about 182 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

London-based Rose Petroleum plc said Monday that its newly-formed subsidiary, Rose Petroleum Utah LLC, will acquire a 75% working interest…

A 21-member coalition based in Utah sent a letter to federal government authorities Monday urging that state and local concerns be adopted to put more of a balance in proposed new rules to protect the sage grouse, according to one of the coalition members, Western Energy Alliance (WEA).

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has opened a draft Utah Greater Sage Grouse Land Use Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for a 90-day public review and has identified one of five alternatives, which includes conservation measures and prescriptions developed by BLM Utah and the U.S. Forest Service, as the preferred alternative.

Although the handwriting has been on the wall for several years now (see Daily GPI, Aug. 30, 2011; July 1, 2011), the momentum has picked up in Utah for accelerating the switch from coal- to natural gas-fired electric generation.

Tens of thousands of acres in Utah if leased for oil and gas exploration could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the state’s schoolchildren. But Gov. Gary Herbert said a decision to lease land to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. should be reconsidered as the acreage could have even more value if managed differently.

Aiming for a report to the state legislature by the end of September, the Utah Public Service Commission (PSC) on Wednesday held a hearing to examine how best to expand the use of natural gas and other alternative fuels in the transportation sector. Many energy representatives and alternative fuel advocates urged that market-based approaches be applied.

Concerned groups like the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) are raising new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions concerns related to the North American natural gas production boom, citing a new paper on methane leakage in Utah’s Uintah Basin released Monday by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and University of Colorado.