Utah’s oil boom would be bigger without feds, officials say

Times are good in the Utah oil patch. Could they be better without federal meddling? Record gas production and a rebounding crude output are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the state budget. Uintah County, the state’s hydrocarbon mother lode, had just 4.2 percent unemployment in December — the state’s lowest rate and half the national average. The main drag along U.S. 40 in Vernal and Naples is a hopscotch run of chain-linked oil-field service companies, which supplies workers well beyond the Beehive State, including to North Dakota’s oil boom. Utah officials predict a long, lucrative future in the business (bigger than the $4 billion that the state says flowed from the ground last year), and the government has leased far more lands and permitted more wells than industry has developed. So why all the fuss about federal obstruction of drilling? “They can say whatever they want,” Bill Ryan, a Vernal-based oil-field services consultant, said of an Interior Department that he believes is blocking what could be a much larger industry. “[President Barack] Obama’s administration can say they’re pro-development, but they always add ‘as long as it’s environmentally sound.’ They’re using the environmental argument to hamper development.” While state lawmakers threaten a long-shot legal bid to own Utah’s federal lands and prime the petroleum pump, the congressional delegation rails against an administration it calls anti-energy. State and county officials say the problem is with a bureaucracy that strings out permitting long enough to deter some would-be bidders. “We’re seeing more exploitation of state and private lands just because companies are seeing that it’s getting more difficult on federal lands,” said John Baza, director of the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining...more