Tag: Department of the Interior

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday continued to clean house on Colorado’s nascent oil shale industry, rolling back midnight regulations from the Bush administration that would have offered four times as many acres for research and development as the industry last leased in 2005.

Late in 2008, the Bush Administration rushed through a regulatory change that would allow concealed-carry firearms to be possessed in national parks and national wildlife refuges in accordance with state permit requirements. The rule went into effect on Jan. 9. The previous common-sense rule had been in effect for national parks since the early 1900s, in one form or another. The rule did not prohibit guns, but simply required them to be unloaded, cased and not immediately accessible.

A teaser ad on MSNBC reports that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will appear with liberal political talker Rachel Maddow to discuss his vision for improving the corruption-plagued federal agency. The show airs at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. MST. But will Salazar appear with or without his signature hat? UPDATE: See the video segment below plus a bonus track featuring our Washington Independent colleague Daphne Eviatar on Alberto Gonzales and the proposed congressional Truth Commission.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar wants the Justice Department to take another look into scandals at the Minerals Management Service with an eye to further criminal prosecution and plans to undertake a "fundamental restructuring of the MMS royalty program," which last year reaped $23.4 billion from oil and gas companies that drill on public land. Salazar, the former Democratic senator named recently to the Obama Cabinet, announced his plans for MMS Thursday afternoon after meeting with the agency's employees in Lakewood.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in recent days has dampened the hopes of state lawmakers who are pushing to revive Colorado’s long-dormant oil shale industry.

An environmental group called on the Department of the Interior to cease fire on a plan to use volunteer sharpshooters to reduce elk herds in Rocky Mountain National Park, instead urging officials to release wolves into the park "as part of the long-term solution to the elk over-browsing problem."

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Wednesday he plans to visit Lakewood on Thursday with a message of sweeping reform for the Department, which he said has been "tarnished by ethical lapses and criminal behavior that has extended to the highest levels of government." In scathing remarks delivered at the White House, the former senior senator from Colorado said he plans to meet with federal employees at the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency that collects billions of dollars for the federal government from oil and gas companies that drill on public land. Salazar said he would make it clear he "will no longer tolerate" the "ethical transgressions" that led to last summer's MMS "scandal involving sex, drugs, and inappropriate gifts from oil and gas companies."

Environmentalists and unarmed national park enthusiasts got a bit of a reprieve Tuesday when the new Obama Administration issued a memo halting further progress on a series of controversial midnight regulations pushed through in the waning days of a lame duck Bush White House.

The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is webstreaming the confirmation hearing of Sen. Ken Salazar to be Secretary of the Interior. Click...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein wasn't the only Senate committee chief surprised by an Obama Cabinet pick. New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who runs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, "never got official notice" that Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar would be nominated to head the Department of Interior, or that scientist Steven Chu would be tapped as secretary of energy, the Los Angeles Times reports Monday in an article about tension between the new administration and Congress. Bingaman's committee staff "pestered aides on the Obama transition team for clues" and eventually "(ferreted) out the names through their own efforts."