Sensitive public lands are not the place for oil leasing
The Trump administration plans to offer nearly 400,000 acres for leasing despite low oil prices and the industry holding many unused leases
This interactive storymap explores the upcoming oil and gas lease sales by the Trump administration’s Interior Department. Nearly 400,000 acres will be offered up before the end of the year. Many of the leases proposed for these sales have significant wildlife and conservation conflicts, including leases in big game and sage-grouse habitat, near national parks and wildlife refuges, and in Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. The storymap highlights each sale, exploring the many valuable places that the Trump administration proposes leasing to the oil and gas industry.
…or read a summary below.
Across the American West, millions of acres of your public lands are leased for oil and gas drilling. Since 2017, the Trump administration has offered over 24.5 million acres nationwide to the oil and gas industry. Trump’s Interior Department is set to offer up nearly 400,000 acres of leases before the end of the year in what could be its last major land giveaway to oil and gas companies.
The lease sales come at a time when the oil industry is collapsing and oil prices are low. Lease sales to a beleaguered industry likely to offer only low bids will shortchange taxpayers who are owed fair market value for their public lands. Leases also lock up land, preventing an area from being preserved or managed for wildlife protection, and make it inaccessible to the public if production were to begin.
Many of the parcels up for lease also impact areas of environmental importance that help support the West’s valuable outdoor recreation economies. If developed, the leases could devastate wildlife habitat, fragment wildlife corridors, and spoil the doorsteps of national parks. There is also the risk of oil spills damaging sensitive habitat. The number of reported spills has increased steadily in some Western states, with 2,811 spills in just Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming last year.
In the midst of a pandemic and economic crash, it is not the time to risk tourism and recreation economies, or access to public lands and open spaces that Westerners value. Public land that contains sensitive habitat or is located near iconic national parks and protected areas has no place in the Interior Department’s upcoming lease sales.
The public land leasing process
Oil and gas leasing on public lands is operated under the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM manages 245 million acres of public land, 90 percent of which are available for oil and gas leasing.
As of early 2020, oil and gas leases lock up over 22 million acres of public lands across ten Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. As long as this land is leased to oil companies, it can become very challenging to protect migrating wildlife or enhance public access for recreation. If an oil company wants to drill, the oil lease typically takes precedence over all other uses.
Oil and gas companies lease public lands for development through a system tilted in favor of the oil and gas industry and against taxpayers. These companies can anonymously nominate public lands for leasing, pay extremely low bid rates, and leave millions of idle leased acres off limits to other uses like recreation or conservation management, while generating as little as $1.50 per acre for taxpayers annually.
If leases are developed, companies pay extremely low, outdated royalty rates on oil and gas produced, as low as half of the rate charged by states like Texas. Even with safeguards in place, companies can abandon oil and gas wells without properly reclaiming them, resulting in thousands of orphaned wells that taxpayers are on the hook for cleaning up.
Conservation conflicts
The oil and gas industry’s footprint on the western landscape is extensive, with many leases located in areas with conservation conflicts. They lock up public lands and encroach near national parks, imperiled wildlife habitat, and critical migration corridors. Additionally, many lease parcels are on low potential lands — land where the potential for oil and gas extraction is extremely low. Leasing in such areas is unnecessary, as the oil and gas industry already has far more leases than it actively uses: as of the end of fiscal year 2018, less than half of the acres leased were producing.
The leasing process, once started, puts control in the hands of oil and gas companies that can lock up acres for multiple decades. This makes it even more important to prevent lease sales from containing parcels with management conflicts. However, the batch of lease sales that will be offered over the next few months include numerous parcels overlapping with big game winter ranges, sage-grouse habitat, and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, as well as near an iconic national park.
View the storymap to learn about each of these types of conservation conflicts.
Upcoming lease sales are set to happen across the West as the Trump administration works to give companies access to more public land in what may be their last lease sale giveaway. Many of these lease sales include unacceptable conflicts.
New Mexico
Eleven parcels covering 7,731 acres will be offered up for lease in New Mexico on October 28th and 29th. Two of these parcels are within ten miles of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The parcels continue a pattern of Trump administration lease sales threatening our national parks with new oil and gas drilling just outside their boundaries.
Utah
Twenty-one parcels covering 23,649 acres will be offered up for lease in Utah on December 8th. These parcels overlap with Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) as well as big game habitat, threatening the wildlife that supports hunting and outdoor recreation economies in local communities.
Colorado
Colorado’s final sale of the year will take place on December 17th. It includes 42 parcels covering 47,445 acres of land in northern and southeastern Colorado. Over half of these parcels are on land with low potential, making them unlikely to produce for the industry while also making them unavailable for proactive resource management. Parcels in the sale also overlap with sage-grouse primary and general habitat, as well as big game winter range. Parcels are also found in or near ACECs and a national wildlife refuge.
Wyoming
Wyoming’s final oil and gas lease sale of this year will be held December 15th through the 17th. There are 275,701 acres proposed for lease, including parcels that were deferred from sales earlier in the year. The Wyoming sale will have significant impacts on greater sage-grouse, with all parcels lying within general sage-grouse habitat. Crucial range for mule deer, pronghorn antelope, elk, and moose is also at risk, with a total of over 92,000 acres up for auction in December.
Now is not the time to risk our valuable and threatened public lands or the outdoor recreation industries that they support. As the oil industry continues to struggle, it will be unable to adequately remediate any damage done to sensitive landscapes exposed to drilling. Even if leased parcels with conflicts remained undeveloped, those leases would still prevent proactive conservation management or outdoor recreation opportunities.
Oil and gas leases of public lands that overlap with sensitive habitat or near iconic national parks have no place in the Interior Department’s upcoming lease sales, which could be the last under the Trump administration. It’s time for those sales to be stopped, or at the very least for parcels with significant wildlife and conservation conflicts to be pulled.
LEARN MORE THROUGH THE INTERACTIVE STORYMAP
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To learn more about the 30x30 goal and to participate in discussions about this bold vision, visit RoadTo30.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to “The Landscape.”
