Greasing the Wheels of Government

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"Consultants paid by the oil and gas industry have been volunteering to work for the Bureau of Land Management's Vernal [Utah] office for the past five months, expediting environmental studies to keep pace with a glut of drilling requests in the region," reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Five consultants paid by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States are working through "a backlog of about 400 permits." The Vernal BLM office receives the second-highest number of drilling applications in the country. The office says there are "a series of safeguards ... to guarantee the work remains objective." But the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which received details of the arrangement through a Freedom of Information Act request, compared the industry "volunteers" to "foxes guarding the henhouse."