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Stop Oil Shale Development on the West’s Public Lands

Is this what you want done with our public lands in the U.S.? Tar Sand oil development is destroying the Canadian Boreal Forest and will devastate our Western United States if we allow it to be produced here.

In 2008, the BLM published a Final PEIS that amended 10 resource management plans (RMPs) in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming to make approximately 2 million acres of public lands potentially available for commercial oil shale leasing and development and 430,000 acres potentially available for tar sands leasing and development. Move ahead to today…

News Release: Washington D.C.– The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has published the Notice of Availability (NOA) of the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) and Possible Land Use Amendments for Allocation of Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resources on Lands Administered by the BLM in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  The publication opens a 90-day public review and comment period.

The Draft PEIS analyzes several alternatives for land allocation and resource management.  Under the BLM’s Preferred Alternative identified in the Draft PEIS, the BLM would continue to support the research and development of hydrocarbon deposits in an environmentally responsible way that protects scarce water supplies in the arid West.

If the BLM decides to adopt the Preferred Alternative, 461,965 acres would be available for research and development of oil shale, a kerogen-rich rock (35,308 acres in Colorado; 252,181 acres in Utah; and 174,476 acres in Wyoming).  In addition, 91,045 acres in eastern Utah would be available for activities related to tar sands, a type of hydrocarbon-wet sedimentary deposit.

THE PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 3RD AND WILL RUN THROUGH MAY 4TH!!!

Please GET INVOLVED by submitting your public comments using this form or the Center for Biological Diversity has made it easy for you by going to their website and TAKING ACTION by using a pre-printed form that you can pass on to others!