A 'Fire Sale' for the Oil And Gas Industry

clipped from www.enn.com The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge _ an unspoiled landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates _ could one day include a drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush administration "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry. Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands. The National Park Service's top official in the state calls it "shocking and disturbing" and says his agency wasn't properly notified. Environmentalists call it a "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry by a departing administration. Officials of the BLM, which oversees millions of acres of public land in the West, say the sale is nothing unusual, and one is "puzzled" that the Park Service is upset.

"We find it shocking and disturbing," said Cordell Roy, the chief Park Service administrator in Utah. "They added 51,000 acres of tracts near Arches, Dinosaur and Canyonlands without telling us about it. That's 40 tracts within four miles of these parks."

It's like Bush actually hates the environment.