As war rages in Ukraine and debate over drilling on American public lands is once again in the news, a new dashboard from the Center for Western Priorities highlights the hypocrisy of the oil industry’s push to throw even more public lands open to drilling. Combined, the oil and gas industry holds leases to more than 25 million acres of publicly-owned minerals, roughly half of which sit unused. Companies now hold more than 9,000 approved, but unused, drilling permits on national public lands, all of which could be put to use today. Further, oil production on public lands is near all time highs, despite industry claims that the Biden administration has suppressed domestic production.

How did we get here?

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. Let’s quickly run through the process.

First, oil companies — or any member of the public — can anonymously nominate a parcel of public lands they’d like to see auctioned for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management must then evaluate those parcels, regardless of how ridiculous the nomination (inside a national park, no oil potential, etc…), and determine what lands should be leased at auction. Once put up for auction, drilling leases are sold at bargain prices — as little as $2/acre — and if they don’t draw any bids, speculators can snap up unsold leases at even cheaper rates.

Oil companies that buy those leases are then subject to unbelievably favorable terms that allow them to pay below-market royalty rates and sit on idle leases for years. Further, oil companies are allowed to submit bonds — deposits intended to cover the costs of cleaning up wells should they go bankrupt — that are far below the actual cost of remediating wells, leaving taxpayers on the hook for millions in cleanup costs.

Has the Biden administration shut down oil production?

The short answer is a resounding no. Even though it only accounts for roughly 7% and 8% of domestic production, respectively, oil and gas production on public lands is at or near an all time high. Similarly, the Biden administration is continuing to approve drilling permits. During 2021, the Bureau of Land Management approved nearly 4,000 drilling permits — a rate higher than during the first three years of the Trump administration.

Now, the oil industry is sitting on a remarkable 9,173 approved, but unused, federal lands drilling permits. To obtain a drilling permit, a company must pay a fee of more than $10,000 and use it within two years (with one two year extension possible). That means oil companies aren’t just speculating; they believe there is oil and gas in their leases and can use the approved permits now. Combined, three companies hold more than a third of all approved, but unused, drilling permits — EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum.

It is also worth noting that roughly half of all approved, but unused, drilling permits are in New Mexico where drillers have dramatically ramped up production in the Permian Basin. Further, the Bureau of Land Management has continued its historical trend of rubber stamping drilling permits. In FY 2020 and FY 2021, the agency approved 98% and 96% of all drilling permits it processed.

In total, the oil industry now holds leases to more than 25 million acres of public lands — an area roughly 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.

Why aren’t oil companies drilling?

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, 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. Similarly, banks that once lent oil companies money are now hesitant to commit more funds without guarantees that they will plow revenues into loan repayment, rather than more new drilling. Further, oil companies face a host of constraints when looking to increase production, namely the availability of drilling crews and sand for hydraulic fracturing.

In stark contrast to the rhetoric of oil industry trade groups, oil CEOs themselves are bragging to investors about their newfound “fiscal discipline” and determination to not increase production, which would inevitably lead to lower gas prices for American consumers.

When the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, the CEO of EOG Resources — the largest holder of approved but unused drilling permits on public lands — announced it would hold back production growth, in line with its industry peers. Just days before that, the CEO of Devon energy — the second-largest holder of approved but unused permits — announced it would focus on “more dividends, less growth” in 2022. Devon’s stock price is up 150% year-to-year thanks to this move to keep gas prices high.

Similar statements abound across the industry. The CEO of Occidental Petroleum repeatedly talked up her company’s “shareholder return framework” on a February earnings call after the war began, promising investors that “we do not intend to grow production in 2022.” The CEO of Civitas Resources, one of the largest oil producers in Colorado with hundreds of unused permits to drill on private and public land, told investors this month that it would funnel its profits from high gas prices to shareholder dividends and stock buybacks, not increased production. And a vice president at Shell even admitted to Congress last week that the pause in public lands leasing enacted by the Biden administration last year has had no impact on the current price of gasoline.

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.

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. 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.

While global economies must consume oil and gas now and in the near future, it is clear we must transition to renewable energy — for the sake of our economy and our climate. One recent data point shows how this renewable future can be an economic boom. Last month, the Interior Department netted more than $4.3 billion at an auction for offshore wind leases in New York and New Jersey. That’s more than 23 times the paltry $131 million brought in by the last oil lease sale covering the entire Gulf of Mexico. So as oil companies once again use a crisis to ask the government for more drilling opportunities, it’s clear that, while oil companies are pushing to maintain their long held grip on our public lands, the future is renewable and the future is now.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• American oil companies cynically try to profit off the Russian invasion
• Progress Report: President Biden’s first year on public lands
• Despite oil industry howling, companies are awash in public lands drilling permits

By the numbers: Oil industry awash in permits, leases while pushing for more drilling was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When the Biden administration enacted a temporary pause on new oil and gas leases on public lands, the oil industry said the sky was falling, predicting massive job losses and production cuts. In the meantime, drill rig counts have increased, stock prices have risen, and major oil companies flush with cash have begun taking steps for their shareholders to reap the benefits. Now, new data from the Bureau of Land Management shows that, despite industry fear mongering, oil companies have nearly 10,000 approved, but unused public lands drilling permits, an all-time high in recent memory.

The system governing drilling on our public lands is profoundly broken. More than a century old, that system allows oil companies to anonymously nominate specific places they would like to drill, pay below-market rates for leases, stockpile permits, then either pay taxpayers a pittance to extract publicly-owned resources or tie up our public lands in leases that never even enter production. Rightfully, the Biden administration has paused the offering of new oil and gas leases on public lands while it evaluates how to reform the system. In the meantime, however, companies can still obtain and use public lands drilling permits on leases they already own.

According to recently released data from the Bureau of Land Management, oil companies now hold 9,841 approved, but unused, drilling permits for federally-owned minerals — up an astonishing 25% since the end of March, and an all-time high. In particular, companies in the drilling-heavy states of New Mexico and Wyoming have 4,626 and 2,867 approved, but unused permits, respectively. Further, the data show that companies are applying for fewer and fewer permits each month, resulting in the BLM approving more permits than are currently being applied for. Basically, the oil and gas industry is insisting that the leasing pause is restricting their ability to produce on federal public lands, but government data show that their interest in acquiring more permits for drilling is actually waning, all while their stockpile of permits is soaring.

This data confirms what a recent study by the Conservation Economics Institute concluded — the impacts of the Biden administration’s temporary pause on new leasing are negligible. Although new leases on federal public lands are currently not being offered, the industry has more than 14 million acres of unused leases already on the books — enough to drill for another 67 years. In fact, the study found that demand for public lands oil and gas leases has declined in recent decades and that employment in the oil and gas industry is not correlated with the issuance of public land leases.

It is long past time for the Bureau of Land Management to reform the system that governs oil and gas leasing and drilling on our public lands. Not only must we ensure that taxpayers are getting a fair return for publicly-owned resources, we must ensure that the impacts of drilling on our communities, wildlife, and climate are being accounted for. Communities around the West are increasingly realizing that our public lands are one of our greatest assets and calling for a more sustainable path focused on conservation and clean energy. As the oil industry continues to howl about the Biden administration’s efforts to reform public land management, government data shows they are once again crying wolf about the impacts of those reforms.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• Debunking the oil industry’s false claims on Biden’s leasing reform
• The oil industry is doing fine with a pause on oil leasing — just ask their CEOs
• Oil industry continues to cry wolf while racking up profits

Despite oil industry howling, companies are awash in public lands drilling permits was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When President Joe Biden took office, he quickly fulfilled a campaign promise by placing a temporary pause on offering new public lands oil and gas leases to allow the Interior Department to examine the broken system for drilling on our public lands and offer recommendations for how it could best benefit our communities, climate, and taxpayers. Reflexively, the oil industry attacked this commonsense step, alleging it would kill jobs and hurt local economies. A brief review of oil company earnings reports shows that the industry was not only wrong in their claims, they are seeing a surge in profits.

Over the past decade, the oil industry invested heavily in new development, racking up massive debt while rarely turning a profit. Faced with plummeting demand during the coronavirus pandemic and international trade wars, the industry cratered in 2020, shutting down drilling rigs and laying off workers. Now, however, it appears oil companies are rebounding, thanks to increased demand. According to filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission covering the first three months of 2021, many major oil companies are seeing sharp increases in earnings, and in most cases beating analyst expectations.

The filings are just the latest confirmation that the oil industry will be largely unaffected by the Biden administration’s pause on new public lands leasing. After all, the industry currently holds leases to 20.9 million acres of public lands across the West, 47% of which are sitting idle. Further, oil companies currently hold roughly 7,700 approved, but unused, drilling permits. In previous SEC filings and shareholder conference calls, multiple oil industry CEOs confirmed that they will be unaffected by the leasing pause.

In February, the head of oil giant ConocoPhillips, one of the largest producers on federal lands, addressed the pause directly during an earnings call with investors, even speculating about the potential impact on the company if the Biden administration went even further and ordered a moratorium on new drilling permits, not just leasing public land. The message from chairman and CEO Ryan Lance was unequivocal: “ConocoPhillips has the flexibility, the diversity and the depth of low cost of supply and low-GHG resource to manage through this issue without materially impacting our plans.” Billy Helms, the Chief Operating Officer of EOG Resources, told an investor conference that the company already has at least four years’ worth of drilling permits on national public lands. “When it comes to access to federal lands, that’s one of the things we’re not really worried about in our business,” Helms said. He added that EOG has “a lot of potential outside of federal land, too.”

The current system for drilling on our public lands is egregiously broken, benefiting oil companies at the expense of communities and our climate. It is incumbent on the Biden administration to take a hard look at how we can overhaul the system to ensure our public lands are part of the climate solution, rather than part of the problem, all while conserving our natural heritage for future generations and supporting local economies. The most recent financial data shows that the oil industry is not only surviving during this commonsense review, they are profiting.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• Debunking the oil industry’s false claims on Biden’s leasing reform
• The oil industry is doing fine with a pause on oil leasing — just ask their CEOs
• The Western Road to 30

Oil industry continues to cry wolf while racking up profits was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shortly after taking office, President Biden ordered the Interior Department to temporarily pause new oil and gas leases on public lands while considering how to reform the century-old program that has long favored the industry at the expense of taxpayers, communities, and our climate. Following that order, the Interior Department recently held a public forum to hear from a broad range of stakeholders, including Native American tribes, community leaders, environmental justice organizations, and the oil and gas industry itself. At the forum, representatives of the oil and gas industry made several deceptive — and often outright false — claims, which they are likely to repeat during a hearing on the leasing pause in the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday, April 27. Faced with the potential for widely popular and long-awaited reform, it appears the industry is turning to its well worn misinformation playbook. Below is a brief look at several false and misleading claims offered by industry representatives, and the reality contradicting them.

False claim: Industry trade groups are credible sources of information concerning the economic impact of DOI’s oil and gas leasing pause.

Reality: The Western Energy Alliance (WEA) and American Petroleum Institute (API) — the oil and gas industry’s most outspoken trade groups — are using discredited studies and outright lies in a blatant effort to undermine the leasing pause and block widely-supported, common-sense reforms to the federal leasing program.

First, WEA and API continue to cite grossly inflated economic data from a WEA-supported study that was prepared by an industry-aligned analyst.

• This analyst, who, at the request of WEA, “change[d] his methodology to count more possible economic impacts” from the leasing pause, may have “exaggerated” those “impacts by 70% to 85%.”
• In reality, the economic impacts of the leasing pause are far more modest than the figures that WEA and API are cavalierly throwing around, as DOI has continued to process and issue previously-sold leases and drilling permits “largely in line with 2020 levels…”
• Rig counts — a widely-accepted measure of the industry’s health — are also trending upward. In Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, rig counts are now higher or on-par with the counts that immediately preceded the pause on Jan. 27.

Second, WEA and API continue to untruthfully cast the pause as a “ban” on leasing.

• Yet, the pause is just that — a temporary time-out on selling new oil and gas leases so that DOI can — for the first time in several decades — evaluate the leasing program and identify much-needed reforms.
• Further, as noted above, DOI has continued to process and issue previously-sold leases and drilling permits.
• Finally, oil and gas companies passed on 20 million acres of public lands leases that were offered during the Trump administration, which further undermines WEA and API’s claim that its members will somehow suffer grave economic harm unless the pause is lifted.

False claim: Orphaned oil wells are primarily a “state and local issue” because there are “only 296 identified orphaned wells” on federal lands

Reality: Orphaned wells — wells that have been abandoned by companies that have since gone bankrupt, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning them up — are a major problem across the United States, including on national public lands.

Yet, at the forum and in the days since, industry has repeated the false claim that there are “only 296 identified orphaned wells” on federal lands. In reality, BLM does not know how many orphaned wells are actually on federal lands because, according to GAO, the agency does not “systematically and comprehensively” track orphaned wells. Thus, there are certainly more than 296 orphaned wells on federal lands, given that there are more than 3 million “abandoned” wells nationwide.

• A recent report from the National Wildlife Federation and Public Land Solutions hints at the real scope of the orphaned well problem on federal lands. According to this report, there are 8,050 idle federal wells across Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming that are either orphaned or at risk of being orphaned.

And given the major increase in oil and gas company bankruptcies in recent years, this number will likely continue to grow much higher as companies abandon wells without reclaiming them. Forty-six companies filed for bankruptcy in 2020 alone.

With this claim, the industry is trying to deflect blame about the growing crisis of emissions from orphaned and abandoned wells, which release the same amount of air pollution as 1.5 million cars, pollutes groundwater, leaks methane and toxic gases, and endangers wildlife — all to avoid being held responsible for reclaiming these wells.

Further, the costs to reclaim wells on federal lands could exceed $6 billion — yet, BLM has collected just $204 million in reclamation bonds from industry. It’s highly unlikely that state and local governments will be willing or able to step in and pay for clean-up costs on federal lands when inadequately bonded companies go bankrupt. Thus, the orphaned well problem is very much a federal problem that requires solutions and prompt action from the federal government.

Misleading claim: Industry is not sitting on unused permits or an abundance of leases

Reality: In the waning months of the Trump administration, the oil and gas industry stockpiled enough leases and permits to continue drilling on public lands for years.

Furthermore, the Center for Western Priorities found that the oil industry regularly fails to use the leases and permits it already has, foregoing development on more than 20 million acres of approved onshore federal leases in the West between 2011 and 2020. More than 8,400 approved onshore drilling permits (APDs) between 2016 and 2020 — 54% of all APDs approved during those five years — either expired without being used or are currently sitting unused.

• Of the 20 million acres of forfeited leases, 12.1 million acres were “terminated,” which typically happens when companies simply stop paying the rent they owe to American taxpayers.

Oil and gas CEOs are even admitting that they are stockpiling permits and leases. For example, David Hager, executive chairman of Devon Energy, said that his company has enough permits on hand to keep drilling for another four years.

And in their annual reports — where companies are required to disclose business risks to shareholders and investors — several large oil and gas companies did not even list the leasing pause as a major risk to their bottom lines. Top producers Chevron and ExxonMobil were among those that did not make any mention of President Biden’s executive order on climate change or the leasing pause. And other major producers downplayed the impact of the pause on their operations:

• Marathon Oil: “We do not believe that the new executive and temporary orders currently in effect will have a material adverse impact on our business.”
• ConocoPhillips: “If this temporary moratorium were to be extended indefinitely, we believe we can mitigate the impact for a considerable period of time with our current permits and adjusting our development plans across our diverse acreage position.”

When leases sit idle, it becomes that much harder for BLM to manage public lands for other important uses like recreation and conservation, and the leases provide next-to-nothing for federal taxpayers.

Industry is trying to assert that the current number of unused permits they are sitting on is “normal” and not indicative of any kind of inactivity, but between October 1, 2020, and January 31, 2021, oil and gas operators received over 2,000 approved drilling permits — at least 77 percent more than they had in the first quarter of any fiscal year within the past ten years. These CEOs are arguing that hoarding 13.9 million idle acres and over 8,400 unused permits is just part of their business model. Well, any business model that relies on leasing as much public land as possible with only the hope that some might help their bottom-line — all while taxpayers and other public lands uses suffer — is inherently flawed. Industry is owning up to these figures as a way of downplaying them.

Misleading narrative: Oil and gas development should trump other uses of public lands

Reality: The Bureau of Land Management has a mandate to manage our public lands for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development. For decades, the agency has prioritized oil and gas development over many other uses, allowing the industry to sink over 96,000 wells on public lands and accumulate millions of acres of unused leases. However, if the oil industry is not able to fully develop the abundant leases they already have, it is not the government’s responsibility to prioritize their bottom line over other uses of public lands.

Outdoor recreation — which is harmed by lands being locked up by oil and gas development — is a $788 billion economy that supports 5.2 million jobs.

Because of the Trump administration’s attempts to make energy development the dominant use of our public lands, practices like speculative and noncompetitive leasing exploded, wasting limited government resources while locking away lands with other uses and doing little to help further development.

For too long, the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of sweetheart deals, leasing our public lands for pennies on the dollars, depriving local, state, and federal governments much needed revenue, while shoveling cleanup costs onto taxpayers. It is time for the Biden administration to see through the oil industry’s well-worn misinformation and dramatically reform the broken system that governs drilling on our public lands.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• The Western Road to 30
• The Mountain West’s top oil and gas-producing states had an average of 6 spills per day in 2020
• The oil industry is doing fine with a pause on oil leasing — just ask their CEOs

Debunking the oil industry’s false claims on Biden’s leasing reform was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On his first day as president, Joe Biden directed the Interior Department to evaluate whether his administration should reverse or modify President Trump’s egregious decision to dramatically shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah. Last week, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited southern Utah to hear from local communities, Native American tribes, and elected officials as she prepares recommendations for President Biden. After her trip, it is clear there is strong support for restoring protections for both national monuments and that failing to act quickly will leave these landscapes vulnerable to looting, vandalism, and the pressures of increased visitation without sufficient management tools.

To properly assess Secretary Haaland’s visit to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, it’s important to revisit the last time an Interior Secretary visited these national monuments when providing recommendations to the president on whether to modify their boundaries or management practices. In 2017, then-Secretary Ryan Zinke whirled through Utah, meeting extensively with monument opponents while ignoring local supporters, touring a potential coal mining location, posing for photos on horseback, and famously telling a Native American woman asking him to meet with tribal leaders to “be nice.” On that trip, the uranium company Energy Fuels Resources handed out maps to Trump administration officials proposing areas surrounding their uranium mine and mining claims be carved from Bears Ears National Monument. The outcome was stark — based on Zinke’s recommendations, President Trump cut roughly 2 million acres from the two national monuments, including the lands identified for uranium and coal mining, as well as countless cultural sites and landmarks sacred to local tribes.

In her first major trip as Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland’s approach could not have been more different. Throughout her visit, Haaland took pains to meet with an extensive range of stakeholders, including Utah’s entire Congressional delegation, state leaders, local elected officials, conservation organizations, mining companies, ranchers, local business owners, paleontologists, and archaeologists. Notably, Haaland, the first ever Native American Interior Secretary, met with leaders of the five Native American tribes who first requested the Bears Ears area be protected as a national monument.

The feedback Haaland received on her trip was clear — tribes, local communities, and people around the country care deeply about Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and want to see the areas protected. Indeed, elected leaders from the two counties closest to Bears Ears National Monument, business owners on the border of Grand Staircase-Escalante, and elected tribal officials all underscored the importance of restoring and expanding monument borders and protections.

In addition to the in-person feedback Haaland heard in Utah, recent polling and data analysis shows that shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was wildly unpopular, and restoring protections to these landscapes has broad public support. An analysis of more than 2.5 million public comments submitted to the Trump Interior Department showed that 98% of respondents opposed reducing or eliminating national monuments. Further, 88% of self-identified Utahns who submitted comments supported maintaining Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as is. Recent polling released by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies project showed that 77% of voters in eight Mountain West states support restoring protections for national monuments, including 74% of voters in Utah.

The consequences of failing to act swiftly are increasingly apparent. Last year an estimated 420,000 people visited the Bears Ears region, a sharp increase from previous years. At the same time, President Trump’s decision to shrink the monument by 85% removed tools from land managers to help mitigate the impacts from increased visitation, leading to more off-road vehicle damage, looting, and vandalism. As Tim Peterson from the Grand Canyon Trust put it, “Google is really managing the monument.”

By instructing his administration to consider reinstating protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments on his first day in office, it is apparent President Biden understands the importance of these two iconic landscapes. Similarly, taking her first major trip as Interior Secretary to southern Utah shows the significance Deb Haaland places on hearing from local communities, elected leaders, and Native American tribes when making her recommendations. As President Biden and his administration decide which actions to take, one thing is crystal clear — there is no time to waste in restoring protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. With skyrocketing visitation and increased pressure from development, the Biden administration must act quickly to protect these irreplaceable landscapes that are sacred to nearby tribes and that support local communities.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• Sally Jewell on climate change, extremism, and the power of listening
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No time to waste in restoring our national monuments was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The last four years proved incredibly damaging for our parks and public lands, with the Trump administration stripping conservation protections and speeding new drilling and mining projects. Perhaps the most illustrative example of this destructive agenda was President Trump’s decision to dramatically shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, opening iconic and sacred landscapes to new mining and development. Now, President Biden has the opportunity to right these wrongs by restoring protections for these national monuments. Not only is it the right thing to do, the American public, including Utahns, strongly support doing so.

Shortly after taking office, President Biden ordered the Interior Department to review the 2017 executive orders eviscerating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, which he has slammed as “assaults on America’s national treasures.” Biden’s order directed the department to deliver its findings and recommendations within 60-days, essentially by the end of March.

As a part of this review, the Biden administration is reaching out to Tribal nations, many of which consider these landscapes sacred and specifically asked for the creation of Bears Ears National Monument. Patrick Gonzales-Rogers, the executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition welcomed the opportunity for substantive input, saying the Trump administration’s “attempts at consultation seemed transactional and optical at best.” Tribal nations and monument supporters will have an ally in Congresswoman Deb Haaland, who will likely be confirmed as the next Interior Secretary, making her the first Native American to lead the department.

Polling and data analysis shows that shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was wildly unpopular, and restoring protections to these landscapes has broad public support. An analysis of more than 2.5 million public comments submitted to the Trump Interior Department showed that 98% of respondents opposed reducing or eliminating national monuments. Further, 88% of self-identified Utahns who submitted comments supported maintaining Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as is. Just this month, polling released by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies project showed that 77% of voters in eight Mountain West states support restoring protections for national monuments, including 74% of voters in Utah.

These national monuments not only conserve iconic landscapes, they benefit the economies of local communities. In 2017, the head of the Boulder and Escalante Chamber of Commerce wrote, “our local tourism industry in Escalante has grown and is thriving,” noting that new lodging facilities have opened, new home construction was at an all-time high, and attributing “the majority of our success to the attraction of the nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.”

In 2020, the San Juan County Commission, representing the Utah county encompassing Bears Ears National Monument, passed a resolution asking President Biden to restore protections for the monument. Neighboring Grand County passed a similar resolution in support of the monument, as did the city council for Moab, Utah, which has seen its outdoor recreation economy boom in recent years.

In its first month, the Biden administration has embraced a bold conservation agenda, setting a goal of protecting 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, moving to reform our broken and rigged system for oil drilling on public lands, and taking steps to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. President Biden should add to this legacy by restoring protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments — a move supported by the American public, Utahns, and local communities.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• Western voters say “go big” on protecting public lands, conserving nature, and tackling climate…
• The dismal legacy of Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda
• Winning the West: Election 2020

It’s time for President Biden to restore our national monuments was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

According to Politico, the Biden administration will implement a one-year pause on issuing new oil and gas leases while it evaluates the impact of America’s public lands drilling program on our climate, communities, and taxpayers. This is a commonsense first step that begins the long-overdue process of reform.

The oil industry has launched a Chicken Little-inspired campaign to convince the public that a pause would mean the end of oil drilling and cost thousands of jobs. A quick look at publicly-available data and recent studies shows just how disingenuous this argument is.

A leasing pause will not devastate the oil and gas industry

The oil and gas industry has amassed a huge backlog of leases and drilling permits that they aren’t even using.

• According to the latest Bureau of Land Management data, oil and gas companies are sitting on 13.4 million acres of oil and gas leases that are not being used for production — an astonishing 51 percent of all active oil and gas leases. These statistics don’t even account for the last-minute blitz of leases sold by the Trump administration.
• Similarly, the oil and gas industry has stockpiled thousands of approved, but unused, drilling permits. According to the Government Accountability Office, oil and gas companies stockpiled 9,950 approved, but unused, drilling permits from 2014–2019, roughly half of all permits approved over that time. According to an Associated Press analysis, oil and gas companies raced to secure thousands more drilling permits in the months leading up to and following the November 2020 election.

Economics, not a lack of public lands, is driving the industry’s demise

Oil and gas companies have spent a decade racking up immense debt, leaving them vulnerable to disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic and international disputes.

• Since 2010, U.S. oil and gas companies accrued more than $340 billion in losses, operating on increasing debt in order to boost production.
• In the oil and gas industry, profitability and drilling decisions are determined by the price of oil. Currently, WTI crude is trading around $52/barrel, much lower than crude prices at the beginning of the shale boom.

America’s public lands drilling system is broken, rigged, and desperately in need of reform

The law governing how we lease public lands for drilling is more than 100 years old, and favors oil and gas companies over communities and taxpayers.

• Under our current system, oil and gas companies nominate public lands they want to drill, purchase oil and gas leases at obscenely low rates, easily obtain drilling permits, and pay taxpayers low and outdated royalty rates, depriving governments of much-needed revenue.
• This system impacts communities by allowing government agencies to easily dismiss public concerns and oil and gas companies to drill and pollute in sensitive areas.
• The system also impacts our climate. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, fossil fuels extracted from public lands account for 24% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The Biden administration should make sure our public lands help communities, taxpayers, and the climate

• By increasing appropriately-sited renewable energy generation, the administration can move our public lands towards a future as net-zero sources of climate emissions, all while creating jobs and ensuring state and local governments have new revenue streams.
• Similarly, managing more public lands for conservation and recreation can harness the booming outdoor industry, supporting jobs both locally and throughout supply chains.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• The dismal legacy of Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda
• The Road to 30
• How Public Lands and Outdoor Issues Won in 2020

The sky is not falling on the oil and gas industry was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the last four years, the Trump administration moved rapidly to dramatically expand drilling on public lands and slash public health and environmental safeguards to benefit the oil and gas industry. Led by former oil lobbyist Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, the administration took full advantage of an outdated legal system that allows oil and gas companies to identify where they want to drill, easily obtain drilling permits, and pay minuscule royalties to taxpayers for extracting publicly-owned oil and gas.

The administration made no attempt to hide its drill-everywhere agenda, branding and promoting it as “energy dominance.” The geographic scope of this push was immense, with drilling leases offered from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in imperiled sage-grouse habitat and on the doorstep of national parks. Further, the elimination of regulations designed to reduce natural gas flaring and venting, as well as rules aimed at increasing the safety and transparency of fracking, will impact communities for years to come.

The Biden administration, as well as Congress, have an opportunity and a responsibility to fix this broken and rigged system. Currently, oil, gas, and coal extracted from public lands account for nearly 25 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. By modernizing our government’s approach to energy development on public lands, the administration can prioritize the development of renewable energy, conserve our natural heritage for future generations, and ensure taxpayers get a fair return for publicly-owned oil and gas, allowing public lands to become part of the climate solution.

Origins of ‘energy dominance’

On March 28, 2017, President Trump issued an executive order that directed federal agencies to “suspend, revise, or rescind [programs and policies] that unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources….” The following day Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke directed his department to operationalitze Trump’s order, specifically requesting a report identifying energy policies to be revised or eliminated. This effort culminated with the October 2017 “Energy Burdens Report,” which recommended sweeping regulatory roll-backs taken straight from the oil and gas industry’s wish list.

In the wake of the report, administration officials embarked on a regulatory slash-and-burn campaign, jettisoning or weakening dozens of rules and policies that protected public health and safety, wildlife, and taxpayers from drilling. To date, the Interior Department has taken action on at least 43 of the burden report’s 49 recommendations, and has transformed BLM from a multiple-use agency to one that is focused almost entirely on facilitating oil and gas development.

Legacy of ‘energy dominance’

From despoiled landscapes to increased pollution, Western communities will grapple with the impacts of energy dominance for years. But its enduring legacy may be in exposing how deeply flawed the system governing oil and gas development on public lands has become. For decades, this system, overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has:

• Needlessly wasted increasingly scarce agency resources;
• Prioritized corporate profits over a fair return for taxpayers;
• Shifted billions in orphaned well liabilities from industry to taxpayers and private landowners;
• Put sensitive public lands, wildlife, and waters at risk, including on the doorstep of national parks and monuments; and
• Marginalized the voices of the public, Native American tribes, and other stakeholders.

The Trump administration did not invent this system — it has been in place for well over thirty years — but its profound flaws opened the door for abuse at the behest of the oil and gas industry.

A wasteful program becomes even more wasteful

Waste has long been a defining feature of the BLM’s oil and gas leasing program. Beginning at the broadest land use planning stage, the agency has always opened a sizable amount of public lands to leasing (nearly 200 million acres, as of 2016), many of which have little to no drilling potential. This sets the stage for widespread conflict and inefficiency down the road.

Because so much land is open to leasing, the oil and gas industry floods the BLM with thousands of lease nominations each year — requests to auction drilling rights to a specific location that can be made anonymously and at no cost — many of which are speculative in nature. Between 2010 and 2019, industry nominated nearly 110 million acres of public lands for leasing, an area larger than the state of California.

Every three months, the BLM holds oil and gas lease sales, even when oil prices are low. And while some sales generate fair returns for taxpayers, many do not. Between 2009 and 2019, BLM offered 54.9 million acres for lease, but just 23 percent (12.7 million acres) sold.

The millions of acres of oil and gas leases that do not sell at auction then become available for noncompetitive leasing — a poster-child for government waste. Through this mechanism, anyone can purchase a noncompetitive lease for just $1.50/acre, without paying a bonus bid that is required at auction. According to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, 99 percent of noncompetitive leases issued between 2003 and 2009 never produced a drop of oil. This is not surprising; within a year or two, industry stops paying rent on most noncompetitive leases, which are then terminated by the BLM. To no avail, the Government Accountability Office, the National Academy of Sciences, and even the Interior Department have all implored the BLM to address this chronic waste by developing a more rational, targeted leasing system.

How the Trump administration magnified this problem:

• Unsurprisingly, in new land use plans, the Trump administration opened as much public land as possible to leasing — roughly 50 million acres. In doing so, the administration ignored widespread calls for greater balance from Western governors, Native American tribes, hunters and anglers, rancher and farmers, and many others.
• Administration officials also pressured the BLM to advance as many nominated leases to sale as possible. In response, BLM staff reported that they were “struggling” to properly evaluate environmental impacts and engage the public, as required by federal law.
• What ensued was a case study in government waste: of the 26.1 million acres offered for lease since January 2017, just 6.1 million acres sold. Federal courts also cancelled many of the leases that did sell (now well over a million acres) because of profound legal flaws with the Trump administration’s leasing practices.
• Noncompetitive leasing also soared to record highs, as speculators snatched-up many of the Trump administration’s unsold leases for just $1.50/acre.

Oil companies — not taxpayers — are the real winners

The oil and gas industry has long benefited from sweetheart rates for public lands drilling. The BLM’s current royalty rate, the money owed to taxpayers for extracting publicly-owned resources, has not changed in over 100 years and is several percentage points lower than the royalty rates of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Additional fees, particularly rental rates and minimum lease bids, are also outdated and far below what is needed to ensure a fair return for taxpayers.

Because of these industry-friendly fiscal policies, state and federal taxpayers have lost out on billions in revenue. A modest increase in the royalty rate — from 12.5 percent to 18.75 percent — would have earned taxpayers an additional $12.4 billion between 2010 and 2019.

The industry has also benefited from the BLM’s ongoing refusal to consider oil and gas prices and other market factors during the leasing process. This fosters widespread speculation in cheap federal leases and lets companies boost their attractiveness to investors by padding their reserves. For these and other reasons, the Government Accountability Office placed BLM’s leasing program on its list of “high risk” federal programs in 2011 (where it remains to this day). Programs are placed on this list “due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need transformation.”

How the Trump Administration magnified this problem:

• Oil and gas companies and speculators — not taxpayers — were the real winners of energy dominance. As oil prices trended downward, even sinking below zero in April 2020, the administration plowed ahead with its leasing agenda.
• The results were not surprising. Over 20 percent of the leases auctioned-off by the Trump Administration sold for the minimum allowable bid of $2.00/acre and noncompetitive leasing surged to record levels.
• By the end of the administration, a cosmetics entrepreneur and poet from Myanmar with no apparent drilling experience was almost single-handedly propping up the leasing program, purchasing well over a hundred of the leases offered by the BLM in the waning months of the administration.
• The administration frequently touted the revenues that its sales generated for federal and state taxpayers. But just one, historically profitable sale in New Mexico accounts for over 54 percent of the bonus bids earned since January 2017. Over half of the Trump administration’s lease sales earned less than $1 million and over 25 percent garnered less than $100,000.
• And then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration bailed out oil and gas companies, many of whom were in financial distress well-before the onset of the pandemic, by curtailing or eliminating their obligation to pay royalties to taxpayers.

Orphaned well liabilities are skyrocketing for taxpayers and private landowners

Oil and gas companies are supposed to plug their wells and restore the land once they’re finished. Before drilling begins, they must post bonds, which are meant to cover clean-up costs in the event they are unable or unwilling to undertake reclamation. Yet, the federal government’s bond amounts are woefully inadequate, dating back to the 1950s and 60s. It can cost $300,000 or more to plug modern oil and gas wells, but the BLM frequently requires companies to post a bond of just $10,000 per well (or less if companies use national or statewide bonds, which can cover hundreds or thousands of wells).

As a result, the BLM has collected just $204 million in bonds, even though there are over 96,000 producible oil and gas wells on public lands and the cost to reclaim these wells could exceed $6 billion. According to the GAO, total current bonds collected works out to just $2,122 in bond coverage per well.

Beyond the profound risk to taxpayers, orphaned wells are environmental hazards, spewing methane and toxic gases, polluting groundwater, and endangering wildlife. There are now about 57,000 orphaned wells throughout the country, and as many as 746,000 other wells that may be orphaned. These numbers are expected to increase significantly in coming years, as more and more oil companies file for bankruptcy.

How the Trump administration magnified this problem:

• The Trump administration turned a blind eye to the mounting fiscal and environmental costs of orphaned wells and instead fast-tracked thousands of drilling permits with the same antiquated bonding rates that have been in place for decades. In doing so, it rejected calls from ranchers, state regulators, and many others to increase bond amounts.
• Between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021, the Trump administration approved 14,386 drilling permits. If each permit leads to one well, then the Trump administration’s reclamation price tag could exceed $4.3 billion and lead to a funding shortfall in the neighborhood of $4 billion.
• Moreover, in defiance of legal restrictions, the administration continued to grant leases to companies with questionable compliance records. For example, the administration issued at least eleven leases to Hilcorp Energy Co., whose “disregard for regulatory compliance” the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission has described as “endemic” and “inexcusable.” Hilcorp currently operates over 11,000 wells in New Mexico, including dozens that have been inactive for several years.

Impacting sensitive lands

Over the years, as the oil and gas industry has expanded its footprint in the American West, conflict between leasing and other public lands values has become increasingly common. This conflict has frequently been resolved in favor of industry, with some BLM employees “believing they were required by law to give greater deference to mineral leasing proposals than to the protection of other land uses on specific leases.”

As a consequence, the West is burdened by a sprawling network of improvidently issued leases and poorly managed development, including within sensitive habitat for Greater sage-grouse, mule deer, and other wildlife species and surrounding numerous national parks and monuments. In places like the Wyoming Range and along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, which have some of the finest fish and game habitat in the West, it has cost millions of dollars to buy back leases that should never have been issued in the first place.

Meanwhile, Native American tribes are still fighting to undo (or at least minimize the impacts of) decades-old leases on ancestral tribal lands, including in Montana’s Badger-Two Medicine, New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon area, and Colorado’s Canyons of the Ancients.

How the Trump administration magnified this problem:

• The Trump administration played a dangerous game of chicken with some of the most iconic landscapes in the West, advancing leasing proposals for lands on the doorstep of at least fourteen national parks and monuments, including Chimney Rock and Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, Great Basin in Nevada, Carlsbad Caverns and Chaco Culture in New Mexico, Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota, Arches, Bears Ears, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Dinosaur, Hovenweep, and Zion in Utah, and Fort Laramie in Wyoming.
• In its final months, the administration rushed to offer oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of America’s wildest landscapes, despite opposition the Gwich’in tribe and virtually no industry demand.
• The administration also targeted ancestral tribal lands, such as Chaco Canyon, Chimney Rock, and lands just outside of Bears Ears National Monument that are dense with cultural resources.
• Nor did the administration spare wildlife, in spite of its rhetoric about championing the hunting community’s cause. One in four leases offered for sale by the administration through April 2019 overlapped with big game priority habitat areas, while leasing and drilling in priority Greater sage-grouse habitat soared.
• Finally, more than 60 percent of the leases issued by the administration are located in water-stressed areas, which could hamper the conservation efforts of western communities that are facing extreme water shortages.

Marginalizing the public

For many years, the public had little to no say in the oil and gas leasing process. The BLM treated leasing as a paper transaction that did not cause environmental harm and rarely, if ever, conducted an environmental analysis or sought public input over lease sales. This changed once federal courts ruled that environmental impacts can flow from the decision to lease (because leases convey drilling rights), and ordered BLM to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) prior to holding sales. In 2010, BLM adopted a nationwide policy that required NEPA analyses, meaningful public participation, and coordination with tribal governments, state fish and game agencies, and other stakeholders for every lease sale.

How the Trump administration magnified this problem:

• The Trump administration deemed the public, tribes, and other stakeholders a “burden” on the oil and gas industry and quickly moved to cut them out of the decision-making process. In 2018, it slashed the minimum number of days for public participation in the leasing process from 60 to just ten.
• A few months later the administration directed the BLM to involve the public only in “borderline” or “unusual” drilling proposals and to avoid preparing NEPA documents “to the greatest extent possible.”
• Even during the COVID pandemic, as oil prices sank below zero and congressional leaders, ranchers, and others pleaded for a time-out, the administration plowed ahead. From March 13th, when President Trump declared a national emergency through January 20th, 2021 the BLM approved close to 4,200 new drilling permits — nearly 30 percent of the total number approved during the entire administration — and offered over 1.8 million acres for leasing.
• Over the past three years, federal courts have consistently sided with the public, finding that the administration had targeted “public involvement in the oil and gas leasing process because such public involvement hindered the oil and gas production industry” and ruling that public input “cannot be set aside in the name of expediting oil and gas lease sales.”

Fixing the System

For four years, the Trump administration took advantage of a broken and rigged oil and gas leasing system to fast-track leasing and drilling and roll back key protections for communities, public lands, waters, and wildlife. The Biden administration has the opportunity and obligation to restore these protections and undertake long-overdue, comprehensive reform of the BLM’s oil and gas program. Steps the administration should take include the following:

• Pause leasing and conduct a programmatic review of the leasing program: The Biden administration should promptly pause and initiate a programmatic review of BLM’s oil and gas leasing program. There is precedent for doing so, as BLM has paused leasing several times in the past, including “to conduct an orderly examination of the fairest and most responsible method of leasing [public] lands.”
• Establish a new mandate for the BLM’s oil and gas leasing program: BLM has a duty to manage leasing in a manner that comports with its multiple-use mission, which includes accounting for “the long-term needs of future generations” and avoiding “permanent impairment” of public lands and waters. Accordingly, the Biden administration should develop a new mandate for the leasing program that reinforces the discretionary nature of leasing and establishes far-reaching conservation, climate change, and taxpayer fairness goals for the program.
• Prevent bad actors from getting new leases and drilling permits: The Biden administration should take steps to identify and prevent bad actors from getting new oil and gas leases and drilling permits. This includes companies that are clearly engaging in speculation, repeatedly fail to make rental payments, and/or flout federal and state air and water quality standards.
• Eliminate the oil and gas industry’s sweetheart deals and protect taxpayers from orphaned well liabilities: The Biden administration should eliminate the sweetheart deals that industry enjoys on public lands and increase the program’s royalty and rental rates and minimum lease bids. Further, the administration should prevent industry from shifting clean-up costs onto taxpayers by strengthening oil and gas bonding requirements. Recent legislation from Senators Grassley and Udall and Senator Bennet provide a helpful framework for addressing these shortcomings.
• Restore the important role of the public, Native American tribes, and other stakeholders: Leasing decisions should not be based on the profit-driven motives of oil and gas executives. Accordingly, the Biden administration should restore and embrace the important role of the public, Native American tribes, and other stakeholders in the leasing decision-making process.
• Ensure public lands are a net-zero source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040: Currently, nearly one-quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels extracted from public lands. The Biden administration should set a national goal of making our public lands a net-zero source of greenhouse gas emissions and promptly move to increase renewable energy generation, conserve key landscapes, and modernize the BLM oil and gas program.

The Interior Department is responsible for managing our public lands for all Americans and conserving our natural heritage for future generations, not merely for rubber stamping oil and gas leases and drilling permits. It is long past time to fix a broken system that allows oil and gas corporations to drill across vast swaths of the West, impacting communities and ecosystems, all the while taking advantage of sweetheart royalty rates. And as we face the existential crisis of climate change, it is time to ensure that our public lands are no longer part of the climate problem, but instrumental in the solution.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• Inside Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record
• The Road to 30
• How Public Lands and Outdoor Issues Won in 2020

The dismal legacy of Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ agenda was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt joined the Trump administration after a lucrative career as a lawyer and lobbyist for drilling and mining companies. In office, he has raced to enact the policy priorities of the oil, gas, and mining industries at the expense of vulnerable communities across the country. Such blatant favoritism has required bending laws and ethics rules, all of which has led to Bernhardt’s dismal record in the courts.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity found that more than 80% of Interior Department actions challenged in court have not been upheld by federal judges. For example, a federal judge recently invalidated an Interior Department legal opinion that would allow oil companies to inadvertently kill migratory birds without penalties. In another case, a judge ruled Secretary Bernhardt had illegally kept acting Bureau of Land Management director William Perry Pendley in office, thereby invalidating new policies he had a role in crafting.

As Bernhardt takes years of anti-conservation baggage and blatant contempt for Indigenous communities back to the private sector, the next administration will face the tall task of undoing the damage. Here’s a brief look inside Bernhardt’s destructive track record:

Dismissing Native American tribes to promote President Trump’s vanity projects

As Interior Secretary, David Bernhardt is responsible for upholding the United States’ trust and treaty obligations to sovereign tribal nations. Instead of upholding those obligations, Bernhardt prioritized the political wishes of President Trump by:

• Facilitating the blasting of ancient burial sites and land sacred to the Tohono O’odham Nation to build the border wall, including lands in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
• Helping draft the proclamation to dramatically shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, over the staunch opposition of numerous Native American tribes who consider the area sacred and led the historic effort to create the monument
• Conducting a massive and potentially dangerous July 4 fireworks display over Mount Rushmore, despite a request from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and several other tribes to cancel the celebration taking place on their traditional territory and lands they consider sacred
• Failing to provide adequate assistance to tribal nations that are being severely and disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. In South Dakota, one tribe is suing after the Interior Department threatened to withhold funding for their police force after the tribe instituted checkpoints to evaluate visitors for coronavirus
• Moving forward with plans to open lands surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico to drilling, despite strong opposition from nearby Native American tribes facing the surging coronavirus pandemic

Using parks and public lands as political tools

Throughout his time in office, Secretary Bernhardt has used our parks and public lands to grant President Trump’s political whims, rather than for all Americans.

• Used National Park Service police to tear gas peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square ahead of a presidential photo op
• Allowed national parks to be used as centerpieces of President Trump’s reelection campaign
• Staged President Trump’s Fox News town hall inside the Lincoln Memorial
• Staged expensive military-infused Independence Day rallies on the National Mall
• Botched the coronavirus pandemic response by failing to provide timely guidance and allowing national parks to stay open, threatening staff, visitors, and gateway communities
• Left national parks open, but understaffed, during multiple government shutdowns, leaving them vulnerable to vandalism

Eviscerating critical protections for wildlife and public health

Secretary Bernhardt has led a rollback of wildlife and public health protections that is unprecedented and breathtaking in scope, all to benefit extractive industries and his former clients, including:

• Finalizing a plan to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest intact wild landscape in America
• Eviscerating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, allowing oil companies to kill birds in oil spills without penalties
• Significantly weakening enforcement of the Endangered Species Act at the behest of the oil industry
• Removing protections for iconic species, including gray wolves and Yellowstone grizzly bears, under the Endangered Species Act
• Weakening protections for the imperiled sage-grouse across vast swaths of the West, clearing the way for more drilling and mining
• Opening 9.3 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest — America’s largest intact old-growth temperate rainforest — to logging
• Weakening offshore drilling safety standards enacted after the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill
• Gutting public health safeguards designed to reduce methane pollution from oil and gas drilling on public lands

Repeatedly bending ethics rules and delivering favors to his former clients

Assuming office shortly after advising and lobbying for dozens of clients with business before the department, David Bernhardt has been the most ethically conflicted Interior Secretary in recent history. In office, Bernhardt has consistently delivered policy favors for his former clients and skirted ethics rules, including:

• Repeatedly delivering policy favors for Westlands Water District, one of his largest former clients, including reducing protections for endangered California fish species and offering the first permanent federal water contract in history
• Disputing guidance from career ethics officials in an attempt to meet with former clients
• Reversing Interior Department policy to advance a controversial pipeline funneling water from the desert near Joshua Tree National Park to the Los Angeles suburbs, a project which Bernhardt lobbied in favor of
• Delivering extensive policy favors to clients who have paid his former firm millions to lobby the Interior Department
• Blocking the public and Congress from viewing his calendars, hiding meeting participants and topics
• Keeping his “closest friend” employed in a top job despite two investigations that found he committed egregious ethical violations
• Overseeing political interference to block sensitive information from being released through public information requests

Managing our public lands for drilling and mining while sidelining key agencies

Entrusted with managing our parks and public lands for the benefit of all Americans, Secretary Bernhardt instead focused exclusively on expanding drilling and mining, while dismantling and sidelining key agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Some of his actions include:

• Offering millions of acres of public lands for oil and gas development, including lands on the doorstep of multiple national parks and monuments
• Dismantling the Bureau of Land Management headquarters, forcing dozens of career employees to quit rather than uproot their entire lives
• Violating the Vacancies Reform Act by leaving “acting” directors in charge of bureaus for years and side-stepping the advise and consent role of the Senate
• Placing William Perry Pendley, a racist, xenophobic, anti-public lands extremist in charge of the Bureau of Land Management
• Appointing Margaret Everson, an advisor to Secretary Bernhardt with no prior experience in the National Park Service, as acting National Park Service director

In sum, David Bernhardt’s track record is the most destructive of any Interior Secretary in recent memory. He has bent the rules in a race to benefit drilling and mining companies, all while sidelining the public and vulnerable communities across the West. Many of these actions are already facing defeat in the court system, and others will lead to devastating consequences for public health, public lands, and wildlife in the years to come. Secretary Bernhardt will soon walk through the revolving door and look for employment in the private sector. While Bernhardt looks to profit off his destructive legacy, the next administration will have to pick up the pieces.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• The Trump Administration’s Unfinished Business on Public Lands
• Lobbyists get bang for the bucks at Interior
• Cutting the Public Out of Public Lands

Inside Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just months after passing the historic Great American Outdoors Act, Congress is once again poised to pass major conservation legislation. Negotiators for the House and Senate are hoping to reach an agreement on a must-pass defense spending bill, including provisions that would protect iconic landscapes across the West. Passing these bills would be a key step towards protecting 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, a bold goal that scientists say would combat the climate and nature crises, while strengthening economies and improving public health.

This summer, both chambers of Congress passed versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), annual legislation that directs spending for national defense agencies. In recent years, the NDAA has been used as a vehicle for public land and wildlife provisions. A Congressional conference committee is now looking to finalize a compromise bill, which would then be passed and signed into law during the upcoming “lame duck” session. Notably, the House version of the NDAA includes three key provisions, which, if adopted, would create lasting protections for public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington.

One provision, the Protecting America’s Wilderness Act, would designate 1.3 million acres of wilderness across the West and 1,000 miles of National Wild and Scenic Rivers in California and Washington. The bill, which enjoys broad public support, would expand protections in Washington’s Olympic National Forest, California’s San Gabriel Mountains, and Colorado’s Continental Divide, safeguarding watersheds, forests, and critical wildlife habitat.

A second, the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act, would protect 400,000 acres of public land across Colorado and create a new National Historic Landscape to honor the legacy of the 10th Mountain Division, a specialized mountain warfare unit, during World War II.

Lastly, the Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act would permanently protect 1 million acres of public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining claims. This legislation would protect the Grand Canyon’s watershed, and the Native American tribal communities who depend on it, from toxic contamination.

Passage of these protections could not come at a more critical time. The American West is losing a football field’s worth of natural area every 30 seconds, and climate change is turbocharging drought and wildfire across the region. These twin climate and nature crises are wreaking havoc on local communities and causing wildlife populations to plummet. At the urging of scientists, leaders in Congress are pushing an effort to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, a goal that Western voters strongly support, according to recent polling. President-elect Biden has indicated he’ll sign an executive order establishing the “30 by 30” goal shortly after he takes office, but reaching that goal will require congressional action as well.

Congressional negotiators have just over a month to hammer out a deal before new legislators are sworn in. Building on the landmark Great American Outdoors Act, they now have an opportunity to protect iconic landscapes across the West for the benefit of local communities and generations to come.

For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.

• The Road to 30
• The 10 public lands and wildlife protections that could be rolled back before the end of the Trump…

Congress again poised to pass major conservation legislation was originally published in Westwise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.