Bush panel aims to speed energy drilling in West

[Nambe]

WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters)

The Bush administration on Thursday said it formed a committee to find faster ways for oil and natural gas companies to obtain drilling permits on federal lands in the Rocky Mountains. ---

But chronic staff shortages within the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management have prevented the agency from reviewing permit requests within a self-imposed 30-day deadline, slowing development of oil and coalbed methane deposits. ---

Last month, the League of Conservation Voters gave the Bush administration an "F" on a report card evaluating his environmental actions and legislative proposals during the past two years. The activist group said the White House has "declared virtual war against America's public lands" to help boost the profits of energy, logging and mining companies.

Banish bush From Texas Too

[priller]

1. In other words

short-circuit the environmental reviews.

[AngryYoungMan]

2. Damn it

I try to avoid the temptation to post "rants," since we all know how we all feel and there's nothing to be gained by ranting to other DUers (beyond a certain cathartic release).

But, damn it...they're just such monsters. Right around the time that it's being admitted that funding for airport security is being cut, these guys have their eye on the oil beneath public lands. They're like infants screaming for milk. It's horrible.

[GreenArrow]

4. not like infants

more like vampires.

[realFedUp]

3. I do have a little piece of land in Wyoming they can try...

nothing but tumbleweeds on it now. Drill away Sunoco.

[BackDoorMan]

5. Support the Sierra Club...it truly helps.

http://www.sierraclub.org/

[sam sarrha]

6. they own plenty, they go for public lands tha tshould be held as reserves

because they get it cheap and dont pass on the discount. they create artificial shortages to justify it.

[Abies]

7. Wyoming is ground zero and 50% federal land

Oil and Gas interests are unrelenting in getting what they want.

More info from people in Wyoming fighting the good fight:

<http://www.wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org/>

[kainah]

9. So many fights in Wyoming, I can't keep up

My beloved emigrant trails (Oregon Trail, California Trail) are under constant assault and not nearly enough of us fighting to save them. The environmental assaults are all over the state. Every time I turn around, there's another scoping statement to respond to. The BLM -- some of whom are good friends from my trails work -- is totally overwhelmed and under enormous pressure. And the energy industry is making a whole new set of people angry -- ranchers!!!! At least we did manage to elect a Dem governor in November and that has helped a little bit. But the feds own so much of the land and they want everything out of it that they can get. The bushistas should be careful. They're in danger of creating an enormous backlash for themselves because public lands here have A LOT of advocates across the spectrum. I wish the Dems would wise up, look at the '02 election returns, and start pouring A LOT of their energies into the intermountain west.

[LEFTofLEFT]

8. Fight these monsters like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

[headlouse]

10. there's not much oil left in america

All the big fields in america have been found and all of them are way past their production peak. These last ditch oil drilling projects aren't going to bear much fruit. We would be destroying nature for nothing.

[Hobarticus]

11. But that's juts it...

...they don't CARE.

A friend of mine who's a Repug (actually quite harmless, really, he's so reactionary it's amusing to light him up) and an outdorrsman how he can support drilling in Alaska, since he loves the outdoors somuch. And he just didn't make the connection, even after I spelled it out for him.

[colorado_ufo]

12. I've got one like that -

a Repug friend who loves to trail ride her horses here in the West and loves the outdoors. She also worships at the Limbaugh altar and makes up an excuse for every asinine thing Bush says or does. She praises the "economic recovery" although she is barely limping along financially. Declares that global warming is a myth, but if there really is any evidence, it is part of a natural cycle caused by erupting volcanoes, etc.

A total disconnect.

[Hobarticus]

13. Amazing, ain't it?

It just makes my own beliefs that much stronger.

He runs his own construction company, built it from the ground up, and I told him that I don't see how he, having doen that, could admire a man who's been handed everything he has. And he couldn't say anything. Sometimes I think I actually get through to him.

[LauraK]

14. Since that is our land, why don't we have the BLM drill....

and keep all the profits for public schools?