Obama's Interior Secretary Likely to Slow Energy Development

President-elect Barack Obama has settled on Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) to lead his Interior Department, according to the Los Angeles Times.

While not the choice environmental groups had argued for, Salazar is likely to put some brakes on oil and gas development of public lands in the West. The Interior Secretary is also responsible for the National Parks system, among other responsibilities.

Among the decisions Salazar is likely to face is the future of oil shale. Oily shale deposits in the American West are a potentially lucrative source of non-traditional oil. But like other non-traditional oil deposits, it's both expensive and highly polluting to extract the oil. If the U.S. is to confront global warming, oil shale is unlikely to be a fuel of the future, making the Interior Secretary's decisions more important than ever.

The Interior Secretary is also ultimately responsible for administration of the Endangered Species Act, which has been beleaguered under the Bush. Most recently, one of Bush's "midnight regulations" reduced the role of scientists in determining whether a species warrants protection or not. Before that, agency scientists had been routinely sidelined, and the Fish and Wildlife Service -- part of the Interior Department -- was forced to reverse some decisions after reviews showed they'd been made by political appointees who ignored scientific recommendations.

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