{"id":115353,"date":"2015-01-12T20:16:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T03:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/blm-touts-leases-in-2014\/"},"modified":"2015-01-12T20:16:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T03:16:27","slug":"blm-touts-leases-in-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/blm-touts-leases-in-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"BLM touts leases in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Bureau of Land Management cites near-record numbers of drilling permits in some states in 2014, and says one of its goals is to step up inspections of the 100,000 wells on public land. Some groups say the focus shouldn\u2019t be on how many permits, leases or wells, but where they are located.<\/span>Courtesy of EcoFlight<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The Bureau of Land Management is offering more leases for drilling on public lands than the energy industry is using or asking for. That\u2019s what the agency said in a wrap-up last week of its 2014 gas and oil lease and permit activity.<\/p>\n

The BLM report said it approved almost 3,800 drilling permits and leased nearly 1.2 million acres of public lands to energy companies last year.<\/p>\n

Whether that\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d depends on whether you\u2019re in the gas and oil business, said Jessica Goad, advocacy director for the Center for Western Priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we\u2019ll hear from industry that they don\u2019t have any access whatsoever, but what we\u2019re seeing from the statistics is that the BLM is actually offering far more than the industry wants to buy at this time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The BLM\u2019s tally is that 11 percent of the natural gas and 5 percent of the oil produced in the United States comes from sites on public lands and that slightly more than 2,500 new wells were drilled in 2014.<\/p>\n

In Colorado, Goad said, it will be up to the governor\u2019s Oil and Gas Task Force to balance energy development with residents\u2019 health and environmental concerns.<\/p>\n

Western Values Project director Chris Saeger predicted that the numbers will be spun differently by different groups \u2013 but they don\u2019t tell the whole story. What\u2019s important for Westerners, he said, is to keep an eye on the locations of any new leases that are proposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really at stake here isn\u2019t the overall number of lands that are being put up for development,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s where are we doing it \u2013 and when it is happening, is it happening responsibly?\u201d<\/p>\n

The BLM recently deferred a land lease near New Mexico\u2019s historic Chaco Canyon that would have allowed fracking.<\/p>\n

Goad said only about one-third of the land already leased by oil and gas companies is being developed. The rest is not \u2013 which the BLM describes as \u201can area the size of the state of Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies are just sitting on their leases, and that\u2019s because it costs nearly nothing to rent those,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019d like to see those rental fees increased, to discourage that sort of speculation on our public land.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said it currently costs \u201cless than a cup of coffee\u201d per year to lease an acre of public land.<\/p>\n

The report is online at www.blm.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

appears to outpace demand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[13,195],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-u-s-bureau-of-land-management"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115353"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}