Washington (Platts)--8Oct2009/359 pm EDT/1959 GMT

The US Interior Department plans to again offer 17 Utah parcels previously withdrawn from a December 2008 oil and natural gas lease sale, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.

Salazar said eight of 77 parcels in the earlier Utah lease sale will not be offered in any future sales and the leasing of 52 parcels will be deferred.

The decision is based an Interior report Salazar had ordered on the original, contested sale that was released Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at the Interior Department, Salazar said the report signifies a new direction on how the US will lease public lands for oil and gas exploration.

"There was a headlong rush to leasing in the prior administration," he said. "It's a new day."

The deferred parcels will not be offered until certain corrections are made to associated leasing documents or until conditions are such that leasing "would assist in the orderly development of the oil and gas resource," the Interior Department said in a statement. Deferral could also mean that some of the the parcels would be permanently excluded from leasing.

The recommendation that the eight parcels be removed was made as a result of field reviews that found that leasing was inappropriate due to critical resource values of adjacent lands and/or the apparent lack of net benefit to be gained from leasing, the department said.

The original lease sale was challenged in court and a federal judge issued a temporary injunction in January restraining the Bureau of Land Management from issuing 77 leases.

Interior subsequently withdrew the parcels pending a report on the air quality impact of development on adjacent or nearby national park land or monuments. -

-Gerald Karey, gerry_karey@platts.com

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com