Western Communities Count on the Biden Administration to Finalize the Oil and Gas Rule
It is time for the Biden administration to listen to Western communities, and quickly finalize the Bureau of Land Management's common-sense oil and gas rule that will ensure that taxpayers receive a fair return from the lease of the public lands that belong to all of us while no longer having to bear the enormous costs of cleaning up the oil and gas industry’s mess.
The 2024 Conservation in the West Poll shows that 90% of Westerners support requiring oil and gas companies to pay for all of the clean-up and land restoration costs after drilling is finished, while 66% support only allowing oil and gas companies the right to drill in areas of public lands where there is a high likelihood to actually produce oil and gas.
These reforms will limit the practice of speculative leasing for oil and gas, ensuring our public lands are managed for other, more valuable uses like hunting, fishing, biking, and hiking.
Federal oil and gas leasing has already resumed in western states and communities cannot afford to lose any more of our taxpayer dollars or public lands to a broken program that for decades has prioritized oil and gas leasing and drilling above all of the other critical values of our landscapes.
The federal oil and gas leasing program has not been updated in decades, is plagued by waste and inefficiency, and is putting our communities, wildlife, water supplies, and air at risk. Public lands are held in trust and managed through DOI and its Bureaus on behalf of all the people of the United States.
Unfortunately, for decades, the oil and gas industry has exerted far too much influence over how public lands are managed.
Leasing decisions are frequently made without meaningful input from the public and affected communities and without fully considering impacts on other values, including outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, and drinking water sources, as well as environmental justice considerations.
Additionally, lands with little actual drilling potential are regularly offered for lease. Many of these leases do not sell, however, which frequently leads to noncompetitive leasing, a wasteful practice that burdens public lands with leases while generating little revenue for taxpayers.
Communities have also not been getting their fair share of the revenue from public lands leasing and drilling. Outdated royalty, rental, and other fiscal practices have diverted billions of dollars in revenue that should have gone to our communities rather than to oil and gas companies. At the same time, we are facing millions, if not billions, in clean-up costs for orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells left-behind by bankrupt oil companies.
For these reasons, HECHO strongly supports the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas rule and urges the Biden administration to move with urgency to finalize these common-sense reforms as soon as possible.