Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he’s scrapping the lease of dozens of parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah’s redrock country. Salazar on Wednesday ordered the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, not to cash checks from winning bidders for the parcels at issue in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups.”
As the head of the Department of Interior, Salazar will face a number of challenges and will also be presented with opportunities to expand energy exploration and production in the United States. In addition to managing the 650 million acres of land under federal ownership, the head of DOI will need to address how it handles offshore and onshore drilling, unconventional sources of energy such as oil shale, and other sources of energy such as uranium mining. The questions Salazar will face in the next few years, with the appropriate answers, can be found here.