Just as the first big holiday of the year made people sweat more than usual about the price of gas, the federal government comes out with a startling report: “With average national gas prices hovering around $4 per gallon, the Bureau of Land Management ... released a study that shows vast untapped oil and natural gas resources exist on public lands in the U.S.”

“America has abundant energy resources,” the BLM quotes C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the interior for land and minerals management. For example, the BLM says, the United States has the world’s largest known concentration of oil shale: “Nearly five times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia underlies a surface area of 16,000 square miles.”

Trouble is, the report said, these resources are not available for development. A long list of constraints, mostly man-made, keep all that energy locked up. As the price of fuel rises and threatens to wreak havoc with American life, we ought to do everything reasonable to put those resources to use. (hh)