The Obama administration’s Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has had a very busy first six weeks. His agency, which handles most domestic energy leasing, has already canceled many onshore oil and natural gas leases. Interior has also slowed to a crawl any progress on new offshore oil leases, and has done the same for oil shale in Colorado. The pro-energy promise of 2008, when President Bush and Congress belatedly began to respond to skyrocketing pump prices by allowing increased domestic production, has already been reversed. In this short span, …
And so it begins: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he’s scrapping the lease of dozens of parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah’s redrock country. Salazar on Wednesday ordered the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, not to cash checks from winning bidders for the parcels at issue in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.” As the head of the Department of Interior, Salazar will face a number of challenges and will also be presented with opportunities to expand energy exploration …
