The latest dispute over leasing federal lands in Kansas, New Mexico, and Kansas for energy production is bubbling up, over plans by the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to open two sales covering 209 parcels of federal land totaling 251,086 acres for the second quarter of 2023 for oil and gas exploration and production.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, more than 40 national and local environmental groups call on Interior to increase the comment period by at least 45 days, hold public hearings that involve affected Indian tribes, and provide Spanish translation service at the public meeting. They write, “We note that the current notices of the proposed lease sales are not posted in Spanish or otherwise available in a translated format.”
The green groups hang their argument largely on claims about the effect of additional oil and gas production on the global climate. “The proposed lease sales stand to impact a range of environmental justice, public health, natural resource, and wildlife issues, but chief among these issues is the existential imperative to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming,” they write.
The BLM proposal is unique compared to prior federal O&G lease sales, the groups assert: “The proposed leases in Wyoming would impact public lands in all four corners of the state. The proposed leasing in New Mexico and Kansas would impact lands that have never been developed for oil and gas.”
The latest flap finds the Biden administration somewhat goofy-footed on energy leasing. The same day as the letter to Haaland was dated, CowbodyStateDaily.com reported that President Biden “seemed to contradict earlier statements he’s made the impact of his policies on the oil and gas industry when he stated at a rally Sunday that there has been no new drilling and that he’d continue to work to end federal drilling.”
Yet the sale announced in October is the second the administration is conducting, E&E News reported: “The planned oil and gas auctions are the second round of onshore leasing under the Biden administration and represent a disappointment for organizations opposed to continued drilling on public lands and waters.
“The White House froze federal oil leasing last year to conduct a review of the government’s management of national stores of crude oil and natural gas in light of climate change but later lifted the moratorium to comply with a court order.”
The ill-named Inflation Reduction Act included some reforms to federal oil and gas leasing, including increased royalty payments and fees coming to Interior. But it also linked renewable energy development to continued auctions of minerals from federal lands.
Politico recently referred to the Democrat’s “oil and gas paradox,” noting, “President Joe Biden’s regulators have approved new oil and gas wells at a far faster pace than the Trump administration did during its first 21 months in office — a fact that undermines Republican election-year arguments about the causes of this year’s high gasoline prices.
The U.S. has also produced more crude oil since Biden’s inauguration than it had done during the equivalent period of former President Donald Trump’s presidency, a POLITICO review of federal energy data shows.
A federal oil and gas lease sale could be quite lucrative for Interior, given high prices for oil and gas. The Wyoming News Exchange, which shares stories from among the state’s newspapers, reports, “Oil and gas lease sale revenue from Wyoming state lands in 2022 far exceeded last year’s disappointing results, the Office of State Lands and Investments announced…. Wyoming earned more this year from its state oil and gas leasing program than it has since 2018. The state brought in only about $1.3 million in 2021, $4.6 million in 2020 and $8.8 million in 2019.
“Its three lease sales in 2018 yielded a combined $25.2 million.”