{"id":49033,"date":"2021-01-25T18:39:40","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T01:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bidens-pause-on-oil-and-gas-splits-conservationists-industry\/"},"modified":"2021-01-26T01:39:40","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T01:39:40","slug":"bidens-pause-on-oil-and-gas-splits-conservationists-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bidens-pause-on-oil-and-gas-splits-conservationists-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden\u2019s pause on oil and gas splits conservationists, industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The BLM in 2018 deferred the lease-sale of a oil and gas development parcel near Great Sand Dunes National Park to allow time to discuss plans with the Navajo Nation, which owns adjacent land.<\/span>Jason Blevins\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Conservationists are cheering the Biden administration\u2019s 60-day pause on new energy development on public lands as a chance to overhaul an antiquated leasing program that has not been modified in decades. Oil and gas producers are not happy and they are warning of severe economic shocks from the decision announced Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBowing to the environmental left to fulfill a campaign promise and to prove his crew with climate change activists has real consequences for Westerners,\u201d said Kathleen Sgamma with the Western Energy Alliance. \u201cThis is a sacrifice of real people\u2019s livelihoods and it does nothing for climate change. If we don\u2019t produce oil and natural gas in the West it gets produced somewhere else and if it comes from overseas, it has even more climate change impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oil and gas harvested<\/a> from federal lands account for about a quarter of all U.S. annual production but it pays a lot of bills.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Land Management has about 26.3 million acres under lease to oil and gas producers right now, including 2.5 million acres in Colorado.<\/p>\n

More than $8 billion in oil and gas royalty revenue \u2014 set at a rate of 12.5% in the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act \u2014 as well as fees from other natural resources were distributed in fiscal 2020 to states and counties, the Reclamation Fund and the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury then distributed $524 million to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That conservation fund has received more than $20 billion in the last 50 years and last year\u2019s Great American Outdoors Act directed $900 million on oil and gas royalties into the fund every year.<\/p>\n

The Biden order suspending new leases and drilling on public land threatens the flow of oil and gas dollars for conservation. The order also could pinch Western economies that rely on the energy industry.<\/p>\n

A study last month by University of Wyoming energy economic professor Timothy Considine estimated Colorado would lose $586 million a year between 2021 and 2025 with a moratorium on new leases on public land and $700 million a year in those five years under an outright ban on drilling. Considine\u2019s study showed Colorado posting $59 million a year in oil and gas tax revenue every year through 2024 under a leasing moratorium and $73 million a year through 2024 under a drilling ban.<\/p>\n

Across eight states, Considine showed tax revenue losses of $2 billion a year through 2024 under a drilling ban. By 2040, Considine concluded, the nation\u2019s gross domestic product would decline by $670.5 billion and job losses would exceed 351,000 a year across those eight states.<\/p>\n

The Ute Indian Tribe<\/a> of Utah\u2019s Uinta and Ouray reservations on Thursday asked the Interior Department\u2019s Acting Secretary Scott de la Vega to exempt the tribes from the energy-development suspension.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination,\u201d reads the letter sent to de la Vega.<\/p>\n

Many conservationists hope that the temporary suspension of drilling and leasing Bureau of Land Management acres for oil and gas development kickstarts an overdue overhaul of natural resource management programs. And perhaps that reform includes an expansion of funding tools for conservation and public lands that rely less heavily on the country\u2019s oil and gas production, said one Western economist.<\/p>\n

The Great American Outdoors Ac<\/a>t is supposed to direct up to $1.3 billion in fees collected from energy producers on BLM land toward maintenance backlogs on National Park Service and National Forest Service lands. In Colorado, 12 of the Park Service\u2019s properties have $238.2 million in delayed projects, led by $78 million in Rocky Mountain National Park.<\/p>\n

The Great American Outdoors Act, which Congress and the Trump administration approved last fall, also directed $900 million a year from offshore energy production to the permanently funded Land and Water Conservation Fund. And other proposals, like the Recovering America\u2019s Wildlife Act, are vying for even more energy funding for conservation.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Interior Department collected $113.7 million in revenue from oil, gas, coal and other natural resource extraction on federal lands in Colorado. In fiscal year 2019, the bureau issued 1,841 new leases, including 62 in Colorado, down from 105 the previous year and a high of 613 in 2001.<\/p>\n

Oil and gas revenue collections in Colorado were down last year more than 50% from 2019, marking the lowest collection since at least 2003. Volatility in the energy market and declining revenues collected by the Interior Department \u2014 the $7.6 billion in natural resources revenue collected in 2020 was the third lowest since 2003 \u2014 creates rollercoasters of revenue, making it difficult to budget for conservation.<\/p>\n

But even in a down market, that energy revenue easily reaches the $1.3 billion directed by the Great American Outdoors Act toward land protection, said Sgamma, who argues the president\u2019s ban on oil and gas development violates the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act and will be denied by the courts when challenged.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the only threat right now to that conservation funding is from the Biden Administration, not from the market,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Tate Watkins is an economist with the Property and Environment Research Center, a Montana research group that explores market-based solutions to environmental problems. Last year he warned about marrying conservation funding to federal energy revenue. He thinks the pause in energy leases and drilling could be \u201ca wake-up call\u201d to start exploring other ways to fund conservation that rely less on oil and gas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much messiness with the outdated systems with these programs. It\u2019s an anachronistic funding system to take oil and gas money and say we are going to conserve some land with it,\u201d said Watkins, whose \u201cA Better Way to Fund Conservation and Recreation\u201d report last fall suggested a user-based system mirroring hunting and fishing licenses to help support public lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf recreationists and conservationists were bringing substantial resources to the table, they would have more political clout when it comes to public lands issues,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe this pause in energy development could be a wake-up call to say, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s start thinking about these alternatives before we are eventually forced to find other funding in the next decade or two.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann Morgan, a 30-year BLM executive who served as the bureau\u2019s Colorado state director from 1997 to 2002, said the pause is a good opportunity to hear from conservation groups as well as oil and gas companies and associations about reforming a program that has gone unchanged for decades despite consistent criticism and industry contributions to climate change.<\/p>\n

Morgan would like to see the BLM revamp its land use regulations to identify places where oil and gas development is \u2014 and is not \u2014 appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 90% of BLM lands are open to oil and gas and anyone can anonymously ask for those lands to be put up for auction regardless of the values they might hold,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cThe BLM should be in charge of deciding if, where and where oil and gas leasing should take place on public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan thinks the Biden administration and the Interior Secretary nominee Deb Haaland will continue to tinker with the management of public lands and the natural resources industry on federal turf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that conservation and natural resource management in general is underfunded and we need to look at a wide array of funding. There is no one funding source to fit the bill,\u201d she said. \u201cI would expect a lot of these kinds of things to happen once the new secretary is in place and her priorities filter down to different agencies, including the BLM.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservationists see chance to overhaul system. Producers predict billions in losses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49033","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=49033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49033"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}