The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced the December 19th auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other red-rock national parks in Utah, according to the Seattle P-I.

The National Park Service’s top official in the state calls it “shocking and disturbing.”

The BLM can’t figure out what all the fuss is about.  BLM state director Selma Sierra was defiant, saying she saw nothing wrong with drilling near national parks.  “I don’t see it as something we are doing to undermine the Park Service.”

Conservation groups dispute that, saying never before has the bureau bunched drilling parcels on the fence lines of national parks.

“This is the fire sale, the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry,” said Stephen Bloch, a staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.  “These are the crown jewels of America’s lands that the BLM is offering to the highest bidder,” he said.

An examination of the parcels, superimposing low-resolution government graphics onto Google Earth maps, shows that in one case, drilling parcels bordering Arches National Park are 1.3 miles from Delicate Arch.

“If you’re standing at Delicate Arch, like thousands of people do every year, and you’re looking through the arch, you could see drill pads on the hillside behind it.  That’s how ridiculous this proposed lease sale is,” said Franklin Seal, a spokesman for the environmental group Wildland CPR.

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.