County commissioners from Shale Country are uniting together against the BLM’s new approach to oil shale and calling for the BLM to stick with the plan already in place so that the industry might take off. Commissioners from Mesa County, Colorado, and Uintah County, Utah, unanimously voted to pass separate resolutions denouncing the federal government’s plan to cut the amount of land potentially available for oil shale development in western Colorado, eastern Utah, and southern Wyoming, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (subscription required) and The Salt Lake Tribune report. The resolutions ask the Bureau of Land Management to cease all activities on the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) and to extend the public comment period beyond the May 4 deadline.
The wording in these resolutions is essentially the same as those recently passed in Garfield County and Rio Blanco County. They blast the Bureau of Land Management for being “anti-oil shale pro-wilderness” and blame the Department of Energy for abdicating their responsibilities to manage and maintain an oil shale industry.
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More after the break.