Interior Department Allows Drilling in North Park

11,160 acres of Colorado’s North Park, which contains the popular North Platte River and its many headwaters, will be open to gas and oil drilling, the U.S. Interior Department announced yesterday. “The prospect of a valley fragmented by islands of drilling is politically difficult because BLM leaders are simultaneously trying to project a new image as conservation-oriented caretakers of the 253 million acres of public land the agency controls. Most of it is located in 12 Western states.” Bruce Finley in the Denver Post.
Interestingly, “only two of 11 offered parcels netted bids in the Bureau of Land Management’s quarterly auction [on Thursday]. About 1,470 acres out of a total of 11,073 up for lease in the area were bid on,” says the Associated Press.