On Dec. 22, the last day before the longest federal holiday of the year, the federal Bureau of Land Management’s field office in Farmington, New Mexico, publicly announced (quietly, via a webpage update) a project cancellation that did the seemingly impossible: It united both conservation groups and oil and gas producers — in bafflement.
“It’s not an acceptable outcome,” said Mike Eisenfeld, energy and climate program manager at San Juan Citizens Alliance. “If I was the oil and gas industry, I’d be livid.”
