SALT LAKE CITY—Documents obtained through a records request show three Utah counties illegally closed a March 27 meeting on how to oppose a federal plan to limit oil-shale leasing, open-government advocates say.
Colorado Common Cause objected when Uintah County organized the closed-door meeting in Vernal with officials from several Utah, Wyoming and Colorado counties.
The organization says the documents show industry lobbyists helped craft a resolution that the counties later passed opposing a U.S. Bureau of Land Management plan to dramatically curtail shale lands available for lease.
The roster included a lobbyist for Red Leaf Resources, a Utah company that holds a state lease for oil shale development in Uintah County, The Salt Lake Tribune reported ( ) Friday. The meeting also sought input from the National Oil Shale Association.
“It’s outrageous that these counties shut the public out of the meeting but let oil-shale lobbyists from Red Leaf and others in the room,” Elena Nunez, executive director of Common Cause Colorado told the Tribune.
“The emails we obtained demonstrate state and local public officials meeting with industry behind closed doors to advance a policy position and develop a political strategy.”
County officials say Utah’s open-meetings law allows governmental bodies to close meetings when discussing imminent litigation, and that’s what they did. The resolution also notes reasons for suing if BLM doesn’t back off, and county commissioners defended it as a legal meeting.
“We brought in specialists from the companies,” said Uintah County Commissioner Mike McKee, who helped organize the meeting. “We have every right and opportunity under the Open Meetings Act to have a closed meeting and discuss potential litigation.”
The meeting included officials from Duchesne and Carbon counties, as well as state officials.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office had no immediate comment about the meeting’s legality, spokesman Paul Murphy said, but anyone who believes a meeting has been closed illegally can file a complaint with it.
It’s difficult to argue that litigation is “imminent” when the BLM’s decision on leasing acreage won’t even be final until year’s end, said Matt Garrington, who monitors oil-shale developments for the Checks and Balances Project.
“No matter what you want to call it, they were coordinating on a political strategy with oil-shale lobbyists from Red Leaf and other oil-shale companies behind closed doors,” he told The Tribune. “This should be a fair and open debate, and it wasn’t.
A Red Leaf representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Kathleen Clarke, Gov. Gary Herbert’s top public lands adviser, said she attended the meeting at the invitation of county economic development officials, but did not organize it.
“It was the county’s meeting. It would be inappropriate for me to opine on the way the meeting was managed,” she said in a statement.
While industry officials say the technology exists to extract fuel from the region’s oil shale, no company has yet done so on a commercial scale—one reason the government suggests scaling back lease offerings.
The BLM has proposed reducing the previously approved land for oil-shale leasing in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming from 1.9 million acres to 462,000 acres, while also decreasing tar sands lease potential from 431,000 acres to 91,000 acres.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune,
