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BLM voids lease sale of energy rights
| Wednesday, Sep 6 2006 10:05 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Sep 6 2006 10:09 PM
The Bureau of Land Management has retroactively withdrawn some 10,000 acres from an oil and gas lease sale that took place in June.
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The agency's Aug. 31 decision voided the sale of energy rights under 11 parcels in or near Kern County.Environmentalists see this as a victory, but the agency plans to redraft environmental documents and hold another auction, said Ron Huntsinger, who manages the BLM field office in Bakersfield.
Huntsinger doesn't know when that auction might take place, but the agency will likely wait until it has enough properties in that general area to warrant a sale, he said.
BLM's environmental documents "need more than just a little brush up," said Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, one of the groups that protested the sale. These lands are all home to sensitive species and aren't appropriate for energy exploration, he said.
Huntsinger disagreed.
"That's a bunch of bunk, frankly," he said. "The areas we're leasing are areas we've used for energy development for quite some time."
In addition to Los Padres ForestWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity, eight property owners protested the sale.
Among the companies that purchased the contested rights is West Coast Land Service of Bakersfield.