No sanctions or cleanup in Utah monument oil mess

The oil coating a desert wash outside Escalante came from three distinct spills over four decades, according to a report released Tuesday by the Bureau of Land Management. Because the hundreds of barrels of oil appear to be degrading in place and are no longer shedding chemical residues downstream, the agency has no immediate plans to clean it up. "It doesn’t represent a threat to the watershed or wildlife at this point, but the report does recommend continual monitoring," said Larry Crutchfield, spokesman for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Nor do federal officials plan to punish the well’s current operator, Citation Oil and Gas Corp., which may not have owned the Upper Valley oil field during the two older, major spills into Little Valley and four other washes leading into what became a national monument. But the company, which was responsible for a small, unreported recent spill, will be required to prepare a new surface use plan and consult quarterly with the BLM and Dixie National Forest, which manages the western half of the oil field...more