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The oil industry has been crying wolf for months that an onshore oil and gas federal leasing pause would devastate their operations—and data has shown again and again that they are just trying to fool the public. As vast reserves of public lands have already been stockpiled by the industry, the leasing pause is not impacting drilling rates.
New reporting shows that approvals for companies to drill on public lands are on pace to reach their highest level since the Bush years, underscoring the fact that the Biden administration's leasing pause is not an attempt to hamstring the industry and undermining complaints from the industry and oil-backed politicians. Rather, the leasing pause is a commonsense step to assess the state of federal leasing. This first step is essential to reforming a broken system so that it protects taxpayers and communities, ensuring a fair return for publicly held resources, a transparent process, and intentional siting and cleanup of environmentally-damaging infrastructure.
Research analysts have confirmed that Biden administration policies have not had a material impact on oil and gas production, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has made it clear that industry fears of a permanent leasing ban are overstated, telling lawmakers, "I don’t think there is a plan right now for a permanent ban... Gas and oil production will continue well into the future and we believe that is the reality of our economy and the world we’re living in."
The next steps in reforming the broken federal leasing system likely await in a report that is set to be released within weeks by the Interior Department. The leasing pause provided the time necessary to create the set of recommendations, which are likely to include key changes such as boosting long-outdated royalty rates companies pay to extract fossil fuels and overhauling financial bonding requirements to ensure U.S. taxpayers don’t pay for any future cleanup.
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The Navajo Nation in particular experiences many of the first and worst impacts of climate change. We have faced intense droughts for decades, hampering our ability to drink safe, clean water and to farm on our lands. Air pollution also disproportionately harms Indigenous communities and other communities of color. The basic elements to sustain life are under direct threat."
