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On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management announced plans to lease nearly 21,000 acres of national public land in Montana and North Dakota to oil and gas companies. It also released an environmental review for the upcoming May 2023 sale in New Mexico. The announcements come as the Interior Department falls further behind on its obligation to write rules implementing the new leasing system created by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Biden administration’s Fall 2022 regulatory agenda, belatedly released last week by the Office of Management and Budget, revealed that rules updating the oil and gas leasing system are only at the Proposed Rule Stage. If the department doesn’t publish a draft rule within the next few weeks, any final rule will likely be published so late that it’s at risk of getting thrown out in 2025 under the Congressional Review Act.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Deputy Director Aaron Weiss: “The Interior Department is playing a dangerous game right now. It’s irresponsible of the Bureau of Land Management to rush to lease hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands before it fully implements the Inflation Reduction Act. There is no provision in the IRA that requires Interior to hold these massive lease sales without proper safeguards in place. The department must shift its resources to get new rules on the books ASAP.”
The Inflation Reduction Act requires the Interior Department to hold lease sales before approving new wind and solar rights-of-way, but the law does not set a timetable for either. Because the IRA also implemented a $5-per-acre fee for new nominations of parcels, it is in the best interest of taxpayers for the department to hold off on any lease sales until all of the parcels being leased are subject to the fee.
In addition to the sales announced Friday, the Bureau of Land Management is also planning lease sales in Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. In total, the agency has proposed leasing nearly 500,000 acres of public land across the West in 2023.
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This is just the beginning, you know. We're going to be building larger coalitions not just with this issue on Thacker Pass, but the issues all across America where lands are being desecrated.”
