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Following the results of the November presidential election, oil companies began stockpiling drilling permits in anticipation of the Biden administration's efforts to address climate change so that they can continue to drill on public lands for years to come.
According to an Associated Press analysis of Bureau of Land Management data, there was a marked increase in bids on drilling leases, particularly in New Mexico and Wyoming, with energy companies submitting more than 3,000 drilling permit applications in a three-month period that included the election. Federal officials approved almost 1,400 drilling applications during that period, the highest number of approvals during Trump’s four-year term despite a global supply glut and an ongoing pandemic.
Houston-based EOG Resources amassed the most permits this year (1,024) including 549 since September, according to AP’s analysis. CEO Lloyd Helms told a November investors conference, “If he (Biden) tries to impose some regulations on how new federal permits are issued, we certainly already have an inventory, a large inventory, of existing federal permits that will sustain activity for several years."
The U.S. Geological Survey said in a 2018 study that oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters generates the equivalent of almost 550 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. President-elect Biden said during the campaign that he would ban new oil and gas permits (including fracking permits) on federal lands.
Siege on U.S. Capitol has Western roots
The Center for Western Priorities' (CWP) Deputy Director, Aaron Weiss spoke with several media outlets following the siege on the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday about the anti-government, anti-public lands extremist groups in the West who instigated the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and those same groups' involvement in the destruction and violence at the Capitol. As Mr. Weiss told the Earth Island Journal, “You can draw a straight line from the Bundy Ranch standoff and Malheur takeover to what happened in Washington," referencing the finding's from CWP’s 2016 report, Going to Extremes, which highlights the explicit ties between anti-public lands extremists and mainstream politicians in the West.
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We have been watching these folks for the past four years being coddled not just by Trump but by [Interior Secretary] David Bernhardt as well. Just this past New Year’s Eve, Bernhardt moved to reinstate the grazing privilege of the Hammond family to the very lands they razed…Now the president emboldened these groups to such an extent that they thought it was proper to invade the Capitol.”
