Oil Shale And Tar Sands Resource Management Plan Amendments To Address Land Use Allocations In Colorado Utah And Wyoming

This PEIS examines alternatives for making BLM-administered lands available for application for future commercial leasing of both oil shale and tar sands resources. The study area for the oil shale resources includes the most geologically prospective resources of the Green River Formation located in the Piceance, Uinta, Green River and Washakie Basins. The study area for tar sands includes those locations designated as Special Tar Sand Areas in the geologic reports prepared by the United States Geological Survey in 1980 and formalized by Congress in the Combined Hydrocarbon Leasing Act of 1981 (P.L. 97-78). The overall intent of the PEIS is to develop a land use plan that will guide the management of public lands administered by the BLM into the future. When approved, this PEIS will amend the Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, White River, Books Cliffs, Diamond Mountain, Great Divide, Green River, Kemmerer, San Rafael Resource Area, and San Juan Resource Area Resource Management Plans and the Henry Mountain and Price River Resource Area Management Framework Plans.

In August 2005, the U.S. Congress enacted the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Public Law 109-58. In Section 369 of this Act, also known as the 'Oil Shale, Tar Sands, and Other Strategic Unconventional Fuels Act of 2005', Congress declared that oil shale and tar sands (and other unconventional fuels) are strategically important domestic energy resources that should be developed to reduce the nation's growing dependence on oil from politically and economically unstable foreign sources. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is developing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate alternatives for establishing commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing programs in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. This PEIS evaluates the potential impacts of alternatives identifying BLM-administered lands as available for application for commercial leasing of oil shale resources within the three states and of tar sands resources within Utah. The scope of the analysis of the PEIS also includes an assessment of the potential effects of future commercial leasing. This Class I cultural resources study is in support of the Draft Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resource Management Plan Amendments to Address Land Use Allocations in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and is an attempt to synthesize archaeological data covering the most geologically prospective lands for oil shale and tar sands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. This report is based solely on geographic information system (GIS) data held by the Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs). The GIS data include the information that the BLM has provided to the SHPOs. The primary purpose of the Class I cultural resources overview is to provide information on the affected environment for the PEIS. Furthermore, this report provides recommendations to support planning decisions and the management of cultural resources that could be impacted by future oil shale and tar sands resource development.