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Show !... Western Resources WRAP-UP BLAA and mineral development ByHeleneC.Monberg , jton-With a couple of self Sagebrush Rebels from and Colorado in the sad-'or sad-'or Secretary James G. Watt ft Director Robert F. Bur-jitoterior Bur-jitoterior Department and the , of Land Mangement are mak-pronged mak-pronged effort to open up 'bUc land to mineral leasing and -joand to move forward on special Sii projects- ,.h i, expected to approve very soon "j MV across 33 miles of federal 51 alio the long planned ETSI to move coal slurry from the River Basin in Wyoming to customers in Oklahoma, Jj and Louisiana via Nebraska sas, a distance of 1,664 miles. iv-saaaUy conceived circa 1969, this rt by Engy Transportation Inc., (ETSI), is made up of a Iscrtiiim of energy, construction and Mial companies. It is finally near-- near-- clearance to allow construction of jcoal slurry pipeline, liflut the same time, in late October i4ry November, BLM is planning to t proposed rule making in the ;jeraJ Register to speed up and --Hy coal leasing on public land. Vled "regs" are expected to 5r,pt existing leases and pending Terence right lease applications a the non suitability criteria cover-4 cover-4 coal mining. ELM is also planning to issue soon ppiA rule making to speed up work j W management plans. This, in a, will speed up putting public land xif lease. The present land manage-jsl manage-jsl process takes so long it has been impediment to leasing, according to ' .-Mr hands. 1 BLM on Sept. 29 will offer for lease it M.76 acres of public land and C' juiicly owned subsurface land in the ised Ceyers Calistoga known !: thermal Resources Area (KRGA) it mh of San Francisco and 11,649.48 'j m in the East Mesa KGRA ' in i: Mm California. "We are stepping r. jMthermal leasing on public lands," ;r Interior spokesman told Western v:; :wces Wrap up (WRW) on Sept. 21. ' Ceyers area provides one third of ! energy needs for the city of San ,, i 'mm, Currently about 3.8 million , rain the United States, mainly in the island much of the acreage on public ,r , inl are designated as KGRA's by the I,, .5 Geological Survey. I TV Big League in leasing federal Ui lor mineral develonment is In- Ws otf shore oil and gas leasing ; : rjram. Watt announced on July 15 a si' Nup in the Interior Department ! year schedule from 1982-80 to lease t- ff Continental Shelf (OCS) lands. Plans, in effect, to offer all of the ,j Mor lease in the period 1983-86, as ,, .582 OCS lease sales are already r " 'ill plans to lease 200 million plus ''BolOCS land per year by basin. By ,v prison, the Carter Administration ; "!! from 10-15 million acres of OCS '.' lease each year by tract. So , , 'f- offering will be 20 times more ; , '''hose of prior administrations. OCS leasing process is being . iwl, so that frontier areas can k (or sale in 24 months rather , months as required under past ;v;, Mures. For political reasons, , "Watt has put on the back . lour controversial tracts off the r Califoniia Coast and two , m Bristol Bay off Alaska," r W WRW on Sept. 23. .- i has been some criticism of i ' (Z Planned increase in areas lor OCS lease, but both BLM ,. , 'nor sources said here on Sept. : r "bubted it would be enough to mjjr change in the program. J . 'mus bids brought in a record " ?Jn in and the bonus bids : i, ;tKl lo exceed that record total r 'fc v a" revenues from OCS ' ), about $1 billion, accor- v '"tenor estimates as of Sept. 23. ! m, under the Watt OCS lease ' " 'Hi?? are estimated to total t ( lll0n annually, mainly 0 . , 15-20 nii"'on acres of OCS s ' year. r ' v'i-,?Uklng a dent in the backlog v J' -Plications" which have '' f K I SUte 0ff'CCS fr 0,1 Sh0re , ruSPS on Public Ian. Bl'r-.- ' , ,n a interview on Sept. W fnscal,forBLM to have v, H k UP "bv the end of ' bcl Permitting, Bur- j- v r ccnt slash in the 1982 .C' lad,Kmg Projected at this K to r CWlld stre'ch out the s' ei,m'nate the backlog bv n - .r7l;accordlng to BLM's Dale -! liSlan-chic' of the Division of 'lf wtually increased V because "we got ;'uKat:ons ' '"se on -1 month" after In-i-ds i , ?sin? moratorium oit Zimmerman told lnall- gotten its team at the state and regional levels for OCS leasing leas-ing in place or nearly so, with Roland G. Robison, Jr., an old Interior Department Depart-ment hand, taking over as Utah State Director this past week. Now Associate BLM Director, Edward L. Hastey will return to his old job as State Director of the California BLM Office as soon as a replacement for Hastey can be lined up in the associate's spot here. With the increase in-crease in public land leasing now taking place, the Office of State Director is becoming more important. OIL SHALE & COAL LEASING Burford told WRW it's even money about 50-50 whether BLM will lease more publicly owned oil shale lands in the Green River Formation in Western Colorado, Eastern Utah and Southwestern Wyoming. "We are in the midst of determining that now," he said on Sept. 21. "We could continue the prototype pro-totype lease program" started by Interior In-terior in 1974 or go to a permanent leasing leas-ing program. If we decided to go to permanent leasing leas-ing we would have to do a basin wide EIS (environmental impact statement), which would take two or two and a half years," Burford said. Interior is also waiting to see what the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation plans to do with the 63 synthetic fuels proposals submitted by industry to the corporation, including several oil shale projects seeking federal assistance. "We want to get our information coordinated coor-dinated with the corporation," he U J Burford on Sept. 21 had just returned from a tour with Watt of oil shale country, coun-try, where several new oil shale developments are taking place, particularly par-ticularly in Garfield, County, Colo. He said the oil shale companies are spending spen-ding a lot of money. I get the impression all of them are looking at their benefit cost ratio in investing in oil shale development. Burford implied that industry interest in-terest in new federal oil leases would be taken into consideration in deciding about a leasing program. The Carter Administration planned to resume the prototype leasing program and then go on to the permanment oil shale leasing program, but its plans were aborted by the 1980 election. ,. Burford 'told WRW 'there 'would 'be some increase in coal leasing, particularly par-ticularly in areas where there is interest in-terest in such leasing. "We have been looking at DOE (Department of Energy) projected targets for 1995. We think the demand will be there for more coal production in the long term," Burford Bur-ford stated. A decision on leasing more federal coal lands cannot be made on a short term basis, with the current "soft" market in mind, as it takes several years to build a coal mine, Burford observed. This Administration's decision will be made on a ratio of nearly two tons of reserves to one ton of demand, rather than on a ratio of one ton of production to one ton of demand, as was done during dur-ing the past Administration, Burford said. The Carter Administration ended a 10 year moratorium on leasing federal coal lands on Dec. 18, 1980, when it announced six tracts would be offered for lease in January in the Green River Ham's Fork Region of Northwestern Colorado and Southern Wyoming. Since then more sales have been held or are planned in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah this year. Burford told WRW on Sept. 23 it is one of BLM's top priorities to clear withdrawals off public lands where they are no longer needed.'as required by the Federal Land Policy and Manag-ment Manag-ment Act of 1976, and to encourage more mineral leasing and location on public land. Some 20 million acres of federal land have been cleared of withdrawals in the fiscal year -ending Sept. 30, and BLM plans to complete the lifting of unneed-ed unneed-ed withdrawals on all of its land by the end of fiscal 1982, Dean Bibles, BLM's Assistant Director of Land Resources, told WRW on Sept. 23. Back on the front burner, is the Alton coal field in Kane County in Southern . Utah. Watt announced on Sept. 21 he had requested the U.S. District Court in Utah to remand a legal case involving the coal field back to Interior for review. Former Interior Secretary C. B. An-, drus decided on Dec. 16, 1980 that 9,000 ' acres out of 28,000 acres under lease in the Alton field were unsuitable for mining min-ing because strip mining can be seen from the field at the Bryce Canyon National Na-tional Park five miles away. Without use of the entire leased acreage, the project sponsors cannot provide enough coal to fuel a proposed steam plant near Las Vegas, which has received both an air quality permit and a siting permit, sponsors told WRW on Sept. 22. Environmentalists blasted Watt's decision to review the Alton field strip mine project. i |