Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. (image: treehugger.com)

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unleashed a vehement attack on critics within the oil and gas industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Salazar said that the Department’s “oil and gas leasing program is robust…[b]ut you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the untruths coming out of” the oil and gas industry. He went on to slam the industry for acting as if it, not the taxpayers, owns public lands; for not developing areas already under lease and instead trying to lease additional acreage; and for taking out leases ripe for challenge, protest, and litigation, which wastes taxpayer and shareholder money. He also stated that 38 onshore oil and gas leases are scheduled for 2010, and that 32 lease sales were held this year, to demonstrate that his Department is not stonewalling on leases.

Salazar was reacting to public criticism from the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS), which last week released a report critical of Department actions. As Kristin Miller reported, the IPAMS report criticizes the Department’s decision to cancel or hold for further review 60 of 77 Utah oil and gas leases granted by the Bush Administration. The report claims that there was “no evidence” of environmental or procedural issues that would support withdrawing the leases, as well as a “’lack of regard’ for the seven-year public planning process” that preceded the leases.

IPAMS offered extensive detail to support their contention that withdrawing the leases was not justified. For example, one of the leases was for a parcel buffered from a national park by existing, previously granted leases, and which had been subject to planning and review to prevent impacts on air quality, paleontology, and engendered species.

Salazar has taken considerable heat for actions that slow the tempo of development; apparently, after the IPAMS report, he’d had enough and decided it was time to hit back.

Map of the oil lease areas in Utah auctioned off to oil and gas companies in December of 2008. (image: conservationnext.com)

As reported by the Deseret News on Thursday, The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States (IPAMS) has released a report criticizing the withdrawal of Utah oil drilling leases by the Department of the Interior.

The 77 leases, granted in the closing hours of the Bush administration, were re-evaluated by the Interior Department under Obama appointee Ken Salazar, who canceled eight of the leases and indefinitely held another 52 for further review.

According to IPAMS’ report, the initial surveys thoroughly met all stipulations for environmental protection on the lease sites, many of which lie in the vicinity of National Parks such as Arches and Canyonlands. The report claims there is “no evidence” to support the withdrawal of any of the parcels on environmental or procedural grounds, and cites a “’lack of regard’ for the seven-year public planning process that produced the Resource Management Plans.”

The auction for the leases was also the site of a protest by environmental activist Tim DeChristopher, who bid a sham $1.8 million for 22,500 acres to keep them off of the market, leading a spokeswoman for IPAMS to cry “politics.”