Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has canceled leases for energy exploration on 77 parcels of federal land in Utah, confirming that this White House is indeed a Small Oil administration.

The previous administration, which was not beholden to environmental special interests and seemed to understand the importance of energy, had released 130,000 acres of largely uninhabited — and uninhabitable — land for oil and gas exploration.

Some of the parcels are in or near the Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.

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"Even a moderate estimate," says the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory, indicates 800 billion barrels are recoverable. That amount alone makes the Green River Formation stock "three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia."

The now-off-limits parcels not in the Green River Formation also hold "vast amounts of domestic, clean energy," according to the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

Democrats and Republicans both talk about energy independence, but one seems to do all it can to make sure the U.S. doesn't achieve it. !!!!!

That party lectures a lot about renewable and alternative energy but is hostile to cheap and readily available fossil fuels.