Interior Resumes Oil and Gas Leasing and Takes First Step Toward Reforms

In April, the administration announced that it will resume oil and gas leasing on federal lands, which typically happen quarterly but had been paused. While federal lands have a multiple use mandate (meaning they are used for many things, from logging and development to mining to conservation to recreation), the “energy dominance” policies of the previous administration often prioritized oil and gas development over other uses, like recreation.

When Interior resumes oil and gas lease sales in June, it will do so with some new changes. Some of these reforms were recommended in a November 2021 Report on the Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Program. They include a royalty rate increase from 12.5 to 18.75 percent, ensuring oil and gas is not prioritized over other land uses, and ensuring Tribal consultation and broad community input. Additionally, the administration will be reinstating a more robust policy to calculate the social cost of greenhouse gases, an important analysis to determine how oil and gas development could contribute to climate change.

Interior said the reformed review process included “analyzing 646 parcels on roughly 733,000 acres that had been previously nominated for leasing by energy companies. As a result of robust environmental review, engagement with Tribes and communities, and prioritizing the American people’s broad interests in public lands, the final sale notices will offer approximately 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres, an 80 percent reduction from the acreage originally nominated.”

You might remember that late last year, Outdoor Alliance and Public Land Solutions submitted comments about the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) offering up a parcel near the San Rafael Swell in a Utah oil and gas lease sale (see letter here). One of the options that BLM proposed was a “Recreational Resources Preservation Alternative,” a first-of-its-kind option that recognized how important the area was for outdoor recreation. Thanks in part to our advocacy, the BLM chose to defer leasing public land next to the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area and selected the “Recreational Resources Preservation Alternative.” To our knowledge, BLM has never developed such a “recreation preservation” alternative during the leasing process. By selecting this alternative, the BLM acknowledged recreation as one of the “primary” multiple uses of public land and ensured that oil and gas was not prioritized over other land uses (see letters thanking Utah BLM State Director, Greg Sheehan, and Secretary Deb Haaland).

Moving forward, a recreation-focused alternative can serve as a model that BLM should consider standardizing as it continues reforming its oil and gas program. Having a standardized approach of discouraging oil and gas activity in popular recreation areas is one important way BLM could modernize its leasing policies to better adhere to its multiple use mandate and protect key landscapes that host valuable uses other than oil and gas development.

While the Interior’s oil and gas reforms were a first positive step, the best available science already shows that opening up new lands for oil and gas development is not compatible with meeting the administration’s stated climate goals. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, Interior must move more purposefully to incorporate the full suite of reforms outlined in the November 2021 federal report and work toward making public lands and waters carbon neutral as soon as possible.