WASHINGTON— On April 15, the U.S. Department of Interior announced that it will resume oil and gas leasing on public lands throughout the West in June. Today, climate, conservation and community groups from across the country filed administrative protests challenging these plans.
The groups say President Joe Biden “should end new leasing to heed his own climate goals while protecting communities, water and wildlife,” according to a press statement from a coalition of groups.
Today’s protests say the U.S. Bureau of Land Management isn’t legally required to conduct lease sales and that its plans fail to prevent climate pollution and harm to people and the environment. They also say the leasing plans also ignore the incompatibility of federal fossil fuel expansion with the U.S. goal of avoiding 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming.
Following the administration’s brief pause on new oil leasing, the June lease sales, involve 144,000 acres in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah, with a majority of acres in Wyoming.
The Department of Interior said the decision to sell the leases follows a court injunction mandating these sales while the government appeals.
“In compliance with an injunction from the Western District of Louisiana, the Department of the Interior is taking action that reflects the balanced approach to energy development and management of our nation’s public lands called for in the agency’s November 2021 report on the Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Program,” according to an announcement from the Secretary of Interior.
“How we manage our public lands and waters says everything about what we value as a nation,” said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland. “For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries above local communities, the natural environment, the impact on our air and water, the needs of Tribal Nations, and, moreover, other uses of our shared public lands. Today, we begin to reset how and what we consider to be the highest and best use of Americans’ resources for the benefit of all current and future generations.”
The lease plans come at time that U.S. oil production is forecasted to average 12.4 million barrels of crude per day in 2023, surpassing the record high set in 2019, according to the National Energy Information Agency.
The lease sales also follow the approval of 3,557 oil drilling permits on public lands Biden’s first year in office, surpassing 2,658 permits approved in Trump's first year, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
The groups disagree with the Interior Secretary’s claims that the lease sale reflects ad “balanced approach to energy development and management of our nation’s public lands.”
Citing harm to people, air, water, public land and wildlife like the embattled greater sage grouse and other endangered species, the protests call for a halt to federal fossil fuel leasing and a nationwide programmatic environmental review to align federal fossil fuel management with the goal of avoiding climate change’s most catastrophic effects, the groups said.
The groups said analyses show that climate pollution from the world’s already-producing fossil fuel developments, if fully developed, would push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of developed fields in the ground.
They also note that thousands of organizations and communities from across the United States have called on President Biden to halt federal fossil fuel expansion and phase out production consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius.
“The administration’s promised comprehensive climate review of the federal oil and gas programs under Executive Order 14008 culminated in a Black Friday report that mentioned climate only twice and proposed modest royalty rate increases and other changes that presume no end to federal oil and gas leasing,” according to the groups. “The Biden administration approved more drilling permits in 2021 than President Trump did in the first year of his presidency, according to federal data analyzed by the Center for Biological Diversity.”
The groups also say climate pollution from federal fossil fuels is “hastening the extinction crisis while impacting communities nationwide with extreme weather, wildfires, regional aridification and river drying, droughts, heat waves and rising seas. Federal fossil fuel extraction disproportionately harms Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.”
The June lease sales come amid record oil and gas industry profit-taking. The watchdog organization Accountable.US reported in February that “Shell, Chevron, BP and Exxon made more than $75.5 billion in profits in 2021 — some of their highest profits in the past decade. Major oil companies also reported billions in profits in the first quarter of 2022.”
Representatives of the groups spoke out on the reasons whey they are filing the administration's actions to stop the resumption of oil and gas drilling on federal land.
“The West is on the verge of another Dust Bowl. We are in the nation’s climate hotspot, disproportionately impacted by climate change, having warmed double the global average, more than 2 degrees Celsius,” said Natasha Léger, executive director, Citizens for a Healthy Community. “Climate leadership means ending new oil and gas leasing that just locks in more climate catastrophe. A lease sale in areas that have already warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius is beyond reckless.”
“Tens of thousands of people have spoken up against drilling on public lands. And now it’s up to the BLM to listen and put an end to leasing once and for all,” said Dan Ritzman, lands, water and wildlife director at the Sierra Club. “For far too long our public lands have been monopolized by the oil and gas industry, leaving behind toxic pollution in their wake, harming local communities, wildlife, and our special places. As we come dangerously close to reaching the 1.5C threshold, it is critical we keep fossil fuels in the ground. It’s time for our public lands and waters to be part of the climate solution, not the problem.”
“Montana is in the throes of major climate change impacts, including less water in our rivers, more intense wildfires across the state, and a prolonged and an intense drought over much of our landscape,” said Derf Johnson, staff attorney with the Montana Environmental Information Center. “The Biden administration’s decision to continue leasing our public lands for fossil fuel extraction flies in the face of his stated goal to reduce emissions and address the climate crisis.”
“In spite of candidate Biden's promises to ban new oil and gas extraction on federal lands, his administration is doing the opposite,” said Daniel E. Estrin, general counsel and advocacy director for Waterkeeper Alliance. “If stopping catastrophic climate change is truly a key administration priority, it’s irrational to lease nearly 150,000 additional acres of public lands to Big Oil. We again call on the president to keep his promises, and for his administration’s actions to match its climate messaging.”
“Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires no more fossil fuel expansion anywhere, starting now, including on public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Each new oil lease is a choice for more megafires, drier rivers, worsening heat waves and hastened extinctions. The president should use his power to keep his climate promise and end fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters.”
Federal agency forecasts record domestic crude oil production in 2023
As the lease sales and administrative protests continue, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. oil production will average 12.4 million barrels per day during 2023, surpassing the record high for domestic crude oil production set in 2019.
“In its January Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts U.S. crude oil production will increase for nine consecutive quarters, from the fourth quarter of 2021 through 2023,” according to a statement from the EIA. “EIA also expects OPEC to increase its crude oil production to 28.9 million barrels per day in 2023, up from an average of 26.3 million barrels per day in 2021.”
“We expect global demand for petroleum products to return to and surpass pre-pandemic levels this year, but crude oil production grows at a faster rate in our forecasts,” said EIA Acting Administrator Steve Nalley. “We expect that as crude oil production increases, inventories will begin to replenish and help push prices lower for gasoline, jet fuel, and other products in the short term.”
The agency also forecasts that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories will reach 465 million barrels at the end of 2023, about 11% more than inventories at the end of 2021.
Other key takeaways from the latest STEO include:
- “EIA estimates that the United States produced 1.5 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar power in 2021, a 23.7% increase from 2020. EIA forecasts U.S. consumption of solar-generated electricity to increase a further 27.3% in 2022 and 25.2% in 2023.
- “By September 2023, EIA expects U.S. natural gas production to reach an average of 98 billion cubic feet per day for the first time and then to average 98.2 billion cubic feet per day the second half of 2023.
- “U.S. coal consumption increased by 14% in 2021 in response to growing demand for coal-fired electricity. EIA expects U.S. coal consumption to decrease by 2% in 2022 and remain relatively unchanged in 2023. Despite the decrease in consumption, EIA forecasts that coal production will increase 6% in 2022.”
The entire Short-Term Energy Outlook is available on the EIA website.
California has issued nearly 11,000 new and reworked oil well permits since Jan. 2019
Meanwhile, oil and gas regulators in California continue to issue thousands of oil and gas drilling permits.
The state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, CalGEM, has approved a total of 10,983 oil drilling permits from January 1, 2019 through March 31, 2022, Consumer Watchdog and Fractracker Alliance revealed at www.NewsomWellWatch.org. In addition, the groups found that the Newsom Administration approved 150 offshore drilling permits in state waters since January 1, 2019.
In the first quarter of this year, CalGem approved 639 total permits, a 3.2% increase from Gov. Newsom Q1 2021. 131 of those were new oil well permits, a 36% increase Q1 2021, while 508 were rework permits, a 2.9% decrease from QI 2021.
Is anybody else beginning to see a pattern here?