CMA CHALLENGES OIL SHALE EIS

May 7, 2012 - 1:09 PM

CMA CHALLENGES OIL SHALE EIS

                In comments filed this week, CMA criticized the BLM’s Draft Programmatic Oil Shale Environmental Impact Statement, contending that it would discourage the development of resources needed to secure our nation’s energy security by restricting the acreage that may be leased for commercial purposes and for including unnecessary environmental reviews in the leasing process. 

           CMA urged approval of the "No Action" alternative from an earlier EIS and strongly opposed a measure that would defer leasing pending determinations that technologies are environmentally and economically feasible. Lease issuance, CMA contends, is simply an initial stage of a process that will later involve the application for and issuance of permits to physically extract the resource. BLM lacks authority to delay lease issuance pending a determination whether the operation is commercially feasible. In the first place, employing commercially feasible technologies to extract the resource is the operator's responsibility and the BLM's insistence on playing a role in what has traditionally and always been a private sector decision is totally inappropriate, especially at this preliminary stage of project development. Nor does BLM have authority to condition lease issuance on whether the technology in question will prove feasible from an environmental standpoint. All of those questions must be deferred to the permitting process where appropriate environmental reviews will be performed.