'Keep It in the Ground' event celebrates postponement of auction

'Keep It in the Ground' event celebrates postponement of auction

(Chris Samuels/Deseret News)


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SALT LAKE CITY — A national movement urging President Barack Obama to stop any new federal leases for fossil fuels turned its attention on Salt Lake City Tuesday, staging a victory party after the Bureau of Land Management postponed an oil and gas lease sale.

Groups that include the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, Canyon Country Rising Tide and the Elders Rising for Intergenerational Justice planned to protest the planned lease sale of 37,580 acres in the Green River District, which includes the Price and Vernal areas.

BLM Utah spokeswoman Megan Crandall issued a press release late Monday saying the "high level of public interest in attending the sale" necessitated postponing the event.

"BLM-Utah expects to reschedule the sale in the near future," she said. "We absolutely intend to move forward with the sale."

Tim Ream, climate and energy campaign director for WildEarth Guardians, said the BLM's action to delay the auction is a victory for the environmental organizations.

"They could not fit enough people inside — they were trying hard to figure out how to handle the large number of people who are fed up with the way they do business," he said.

Photo: Chris Samuels/Deseret News
Photo: Chris Samuels/Deseret News

Initially, the agency had planned to offer 73,000 acres for potential oil and gas development but reduced the acreage at the conclusion of a protest period.

The Salt Lake City event, in which dozens carried signs or homemade bidder paddles, was one of several planned around the country by the movement, including BLM auctions in Reno, Nevada; Lakewood, Colorado; Wyoming; and Washington, D.C.

Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for the Western Energy Alliance — a regional association of independent oil and gas producers — said the movement has unattainable expectations.

"I think they are rather silly," she said. "The demands of these groups are simply unrealistic. Our whole economy depends on oil and natural gas, and natural gas is probably the single-biggest reason the United States has been able to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions."

The groups are putting pressure on Obama to cancel federal oil and gas lease sales, a move they say would keep 450 billion tons of carbon pollution from escaping into the atmosphere.

Such a move, they say, would be the single-most effective step he could take as president to curb climate change.

But Sgamma said the BLM is following the directive of Congress — not the president — by following the Mineral Leasing Act requiring quarterly lease sales of oil and gas parcels in producing states that have federal land.

Photo: Chris Samuels/Deseret News
Photo: Chris Samuels/Deseret News

"The theatrics and disruption are more of a circus," she said. "I think the BLM was wise to postpone the sale instead of giving these groups an opportunity to disrupt the (sale), which is required by law."

Protests have borrowed language from legislation unveiled earlier this month by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Jeff Merkeley, D-Ore., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called the Keep It in the Ground Act. The legislation would prevent companies from pursuing new leases for coal, oil, gas, shale and tar sands extraction on federal land. It would also ban offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, and stop new leasing in the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.

In September, more than 400 organizations and leaders called on Obama to end federal fossil fuel leasing, including Bill McKibben, author and co-founder of 350.org and environmental activist Timothy DeChristoper, a former Utah resident who monkey-wrenched a BLM auction in December 2008 in Salt Lake City. DeChristopher was subsequently convicted in federal court and sentenced to two years in prison.

Tuesday's planned auction in Salt Lake City was to be streamed live for the first time. Crandall said the intent of the streaming is to provide more access for the public, although restricting walk-in access also diminishes credible risks of disruption by activists.

"People should be engaged, both those who are for the auctions and those who are against them," she said.

Ream said the Keep It in the Ground Movement formed just a couple of weeks ago, staging its first protest in Wyoming over fossil fuel extraction. A subsequent protest targeting the BLM was held last week in Colorado.

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