Bush wants to hand out party favors to all of Big Oil executives before he leaves office and one last brutal assault on the environment. He is trying to justify it by saying Clinton did the same thing. The end of this error can’t come soon enough. What he has planned for Utah is tantamount to plundering 6 million acres for commercial exploitation.

Gale Norton has to be happy. In 2003, Ms. Norton, then President Bush’s secretary of the interior (and now a senior oil executive at Royal Dutch Shell), struck a deal with the governor of Utah that would open about 3 million pristine acres of federal land to oil and gas drilling. Environmental groups and the courts managed to keep the drillers at bay. No longer. On Tuesday, the bureau announced that it would soon begin selling oil and gas leases – essentially the right to drill – in some of the most beautiful and fragile areas.

It’s no wonder that Conservationists and Environmental groups are upset – all of this is being done without consulting with the National Park Service. They plan to just auction off over two dozen leases around Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, the bureau will be putting in jeopardy not only the water source but the air also.

This sort of pillage would be hard to justify even if Utah’s reserves were large enough to make a difference, which they are not. The Energy Information Administration says that Utah has 2.5 percent of the country’s known natural gas reserves and less than 1 percent of its known oil reserves. And even if those reserves were worth going after, it would still be essential to protect areas of special cultural, scenic and recreational value.

Last but not least, Keith weighs in on Bush’s attempt to sell mining leases.