No Drilling in Glen Canyon NRA

Call it bureaucratic overload or call it commonsense, but whichever term you choose it's good news that the National Park Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management have agreed that there should be no oil drilling within the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
The BLM actually owns some parcels within Glen Canyon, and a Denver-based exploration company was ready to sink an exploratory oil well on them, saying that oil deposits beneath the parcels could hold upwards of $24 billion worth of oil.
Ah, but the other day saner heads prevailed and the two land-management agencies decided not to move forward with the auction. Why? Well, a Glen Canyon official says they didn't have enough information to complete an environmental assessment on the drilling proposal.
But officials for Viking Exploration says the BLM and NPS didn't give them enough time to provide that information.
"I've been waiting 16 years for them to approve the (drilling permit)," company president Chuck Einarsen told the Salt Lake Tribune. "Then they sent me two letters with (60) questions they wanted me to answer, and gave me 30 days to respond. To me, they were so unreasonable in their request that it was impossible to comply with all the crap that didn't even have any bearing on the impact of the one well."
Stay tuned, though, as Einarsen says he will appeal the ruling.