Critics have been saying it for months. Under President Donald Trump, Utah’s scenic public lands are being sold off to the highest bidder.
But if Tuesday’s oil and gas lease auction is any indication, then plenty of parcels aren’t worth bidding on, and many of those “highest” bids are pretty low.
For many critics, the results raise the question of why the Bureau of Land Management is going through the costly trouble of auctioning these leases if they mostly fetch fire-sale prices.
The online sale was Utah’s biggest offering of public lands for oil and gas leasing since the George W.