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Salazar launches ‘major reforms’ for onshore leasing program Secretary of the Interior says reforms include new guidance to field managers, new reviews Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Citing pushback from the public on the level of onshore oil and gas leasing under the Bush administration, President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, said in a Jan. 6 press conference that the department is making “major reforms of the nation’s onshore oil and gas leasing program.”
The pushback is reflected in the number of onshore oil and gas leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management that are challenged.
In 1998, Salazar said, “a little over 1 percent of BLM’s oil and gas leases were protested.”
“Ten years later, in 2008, 40 percent of BLM’s oil and gas leases were protested.”
As a result, millions of dollars are being spent on litigation and resources are tied up.
“Almost nobody’s happy with the status quo,” the secretary said.
Industry faces uncertainty because of the number of BLM leases held up by litigation.
“States and local governments don’t have the benefit of a clear federal policy on which federal lands are, and are not, appropriate for development.”
The public often feels shut out of the process, he said.
Flaws in the current leasing process came “into sharp focus in Utah,” where the Bush administration offered “several highly controversial parcels for lease” in late 2008, leasing which has been litigated.
Interior did a review of the Utah leasing, with each of the 77 parcels in question visited by an interdisciplinary team. A report submitted to the secretary in October recommended “BLM lead the development of a comprehensive interagency strategy to address energy leasing, development and related air quality concerns for Utah and other western states,” Interior said in an Oct. 8 statement on the report. The report recommended leasing 17 of the parcels, deferring 52 parcels and withdrawing six parcels. The 52 deferred leases could be removed from leasing, but Interior said the recommendation to remove the six parcels “was the direct result of field reviews that found that leasing was inappropriate due to critical resource values and for the apparent lack of net benefit to be gained from leasing.”
Shortcomings identified Salazar said many of the reforms BLM announced Jan. 6 are in response to shortcomings found in the report on the Utah lease sale.
BLM Director Bob Abbey said there are a number of safeguards already in place “to limit the impact of oil and gas development on public land and resources” managed by BLM.
He said the agency will be focused on “doing a better job of assessing and analyzing potential impacts to natural resources at the leasing phase and prior to making irreversible commitments to develop an area.”
Abbey said that under the new policy, “comprehensive reviews will be conducted that take into account site-specific considerations for individual lease parcels.”
Resource management plans by BLM will continue to provide broad guidance, but “the individual parcels that are being considered for leasing will undergo increased internal and external coordination,” and BLM will provide for further opportunities for public participation and comment. In addition to interdisciplinary review of available data, BLM employees will do “site visits to parcels to supplement and validate existing information.”
There will be opportunities for “greater public involvement in developing master leasing and development plans for areas where intensive oil and gas extraction is anticipated,” Abbey said, allowing the public to share concerns about possible impacts on natural resource values in an area, prior to BLM offering parcels for lease.
He said BLM will “assume a leadership role in identifying where new oil and gas leasing will occur,” and while the agency will continue to accept industry expressions of interest, “we’re going to be placing emphasis in leasing in already developed areas or near areas that have been developed.” BLM will, Abbey said, be planning “carefully for leasing and development in any new areas where the industry has identified potential sources of oil and natural gas.”
Concern about Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was out of the country when Interior announced its changes, but Robert Dillon, spokesman for Murkowski, said the changes announced by Salazar will only provide certainty that “more production will be driven overseas.”
“You don’t get more production by restricting development to depleted fields and increasing regulation,” Dillon said.
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said it already can take up to 10 years in Alaska to “actually produce a drop of oil and most of that time is devoted to government permitting.”
Begich said he was concerned that the new procedures “will further delay oil and gas development, especially in my state, where it is broadly supported and where we know how to develop in an environmentally responsible way.”
The senator said he supports full public review, but said the new procedures announced Jan. 6 by Interior “appear to address some processes followed in the past that led to the Bureau of Land Management illegally approving leases in Utah.”
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