Funny how the press doesn't say much about the new oil developments in Nebraska, SD,ND, and Montana. And how we don't hear about the super fields in the Gulf until a drilling operation is just horribly messed up.
I knew someone in the oil business in Utah and visited his little war room. He had a huge map all across his two walls showing eastern Utah developments, and told me there was even more in New Mexico. Given to understatements of his case, I took it as something equal to Texas.
That was back when the Escalante Staircase National Monument was fresh news. I had known something about the coal on Kaiparowits, and I had heard how Bill Clinton spent two weeks on the Rockefeller property in Jackson Hole, then flew down to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, had some old forest trees knocked down and dragged outta the view so he could have a photo op waving his arm out over the Grand Canyon declaring a "National Monument" the bigger than Hawaii, Connecticut and New Jersey, and shutting down a multi-billion dollar development owned by the Dutch.
My acquaintance, who was in a position to know, told me the reason: "We can't let them (the Dutch) have that coal."
When the right time comes, and the right people own the resource, the National Monument rules will be changed to allow development.
Same thing with oil shale.
