Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Oil industry sits on 25 million acres, 9,000 permits while calling for more drilling
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Wednesday, March 16, 2022

For more than a century, the oil industry has taken advantage of a broken and rigged legal system that lets it drill on public lands at bargain rates. Now, the oil industry is sitting on a remarkable 9,173 approved, but unused, federal lands drilling permits ([link removed]) . In total, the oil industry now holds leases to roughly 25 million acres ([link removed]) of public lands — an area approximately the size of Kentucky. Of those 25 million acres, roughly half are sitting idle, meaning oil companies hold existing rights to develop those resources, but are choosing not to.

The oil industry is cynically using the war in Ukraine to once again drag out its favorite policy playbook — blaming the president for high gas prices and asking the Interior Department to throw open all of our public lands to oil drilling while also reducing the already-weak processes for granting permits and leases. A new dashboard from the Center for Western Priorities ([link removed]) highlights the hypocrisy of the oil industry’s push to throw even more public lands open to drilling. The data shows that the Biden administration is not standing in the way of public lands oil production and that oil companies have more drilling permits and leases than they know what to do with. In fact, oil production on public lands is near all time highs, despite industry claims that the Biden administration has suppressed domestic production.

Over the last decade, oil companies have not only been lighting excess natural gas on fire, they’ve been lighting money on fire as well. As of the beginning of 2022, oil companies listed in the S&P Oil and Gas Exploration and Production index had amassed $167 billion in debt ([link removed]) , down from a high of $298 billion in 2020. Now that oil prices have risen, investors are looking to see profits returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, rather than invested in more production. In short, the constraints facing oil companies right now are not the availability of public lands or drilling permits, they are access to financing and supply chain shortages — the direct result of years of bad business practices.
Quick hits


** Study: coal mines emit more methane than oil or gas
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E&E News ([link removed])


** Opinion: Speculative oil and gas leasing is wasting Nevada public lands
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Nevada Independent ([link removed])


** Report: A plan for the U.S. Forest Service to lead on the America the Beautiful initiative
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Center for American Progress ([link removed])


** Rocky Mountain Arsenal's journey from chemical weapons Superfund site to "flagship urban refuge"
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Colorado Gazette ([link removed])


** Storymap: Bears Ears and radioactive waste—the White Mesa Mill story
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Grand Canyon Trust ([link removed])


** Expediting energy permitting, drilling is no quick fix for supply challenges
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Bloomberg Law ([link removed]) | Colorado Public Radio ([link removed])


** Opinion: Big Oil is exploiting the war in Ukraine for corporate profit
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Denver Post ([link removed])


** Underrated Arizona national parks road trip
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Only In Your State ([link removed])
Quote of the day
” The oil and gas industry is taking this moment to make the point they’re always making, and will always make, that they should have more access to more federal land to drill on whenever it becomes economically advantageous for them to do so and while paying the very minimum in royalties to the taxpayers who own those resources."
—Ian Silverii, former director of ProgressNow Colorado, Denver Post ([link removed])
Picture this


** @Interior ([link removed])
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Happy 119th birthday, @USFWSRefuges ([link removed]) ! Founded by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, the refuge system is a diverse network of lands and waters in all 50 states and 5 territories dedicated to conserving America’s rich fish and wildlife heritage. Photo by Craig McIntyre

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