Who Owns The West? Oil & Gas Leases in America's West

"Utah needs to ensure that existing staff understand that when an oil and gas lease parcel or when an application for permission to drill comes in the door, that this work is their No. 1 priority,"

— BLM Memo to Utah land managers, 2002. (The New York Times, February 8, 2002, page 14)

Under federal law, the Department of the Interior has a duty to balance competing uses of federal land. On the one hand, the Department must "protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values." On the other hand, the Department must manage public lands "in a manner which recognizes the Nation's need for domestic sources of minerals, food, timber, and fiber" (FLPMA 2004).

An Environmental Working Group analysis of government records on public land use decisions shows that the Bush administration appears to have tipped the balance in favor of oil and gas drilling, minimizing efforts to protect other important resources, and is systematically stripping land protections hard won in previous administrations. Significant actions of this administration that have favored the oil and gas interests above other public interests are documented below.

Lands newly opened to drilling

EWG's analysis of public land use decision records show that the Bush administration has issued a series of decisions and proposals that collectively will strip protections from 45 million acres of the country's most pristine remaining wild areas. The administration is on track to open for drilling an average of 12.7 million acres per year in 12 western states, compared to a net 7.7 million acres per year protected from drilling under the Clinton administration, according to an EWG analysis of government records. The decisions range from a series of Public Land Orders issued by the Department of Interior, to the recent administration proposal to entrust local government with land use decisions on millions of acres of roadless Forest Service land protected by the previous administration. Each of the actions documented below either open or close the land for mineral leasing. Closures to leasing mandated by the federal government preempt local land use plans.

From 2001-2004, 45 Million Acres in 12 Western States have been stripped of protections from drilling

Type of Land	1993-2000 (acres)	2001-2004 (acres)
Roadless Areas	41,855,000	(41,855,000)
Wilderness Areas	9,027,447	507,003
Utah/Colorado Wilderness Settlement	3,200,000	(3,200,000)
National Monuments	5,289,660
National Parks	4,560,108	1,158
National Wildlife Refuges	34,186	3,040
Public Land Orders	38,873	(2,180)

Total	64,005,274	(44,547,137)

Acres Per Year	8,000,659	(12,727,753)

Note: Numbers in green represent acres protected. Numbers in (red) inside parentheses represent land where protections against oil and gas drilling were removed.
This table lists major federal designations through which land potentially open to oil and gas was protected from drilling and land previously closed to oil and gas was opened to potential drilling during the past two administrations. A small portion of the land listed as protected in 1993-2000 was previously protected under other administrations.
Source: EWG compilation and analysis of data from public land orders published in the Federal Register from January 1 1993 through July 15 2004, and information on other federal actions affecting land designations published by The Wilderness Society and The U.S. Forest Service. For a more complete explanation of the table, see the Methodology section

From 2001-2004 vast areas in the Western U.S. have been stripped of protections from drilling

Protected from oil and gas drilling from 1993-2000 (8,000,661 acres per year) in the Western U.S.



	Stripped drilling protections from 2001-2004 (12,727,423 acres per year) in the Western U.S.

Source: EWG compilation and analysis of data from public land orders published in the Federal Register from January 1 1993 through July 15 2004, and information on other federal actions affecting land designations published by The Wilderness Society and The U.S. Forest Service.

Although lands now stripped of protections will not necessarily be leased, the option to lease is now a possibility, and the decision to grant such leases is in the hands of local government officials.

Administration decisions that have opened lands up for drilling, if companies choose to lease, include a recent proposal to reverse protections on 41.9 million acres of roadless Forest Service land in 12 western states, leaving land use decisions in the hands of local governments; a capitulation to Utah's then-governor Mike Leavitt (now the federal EPA Administrator) to open 3.2 million acres of proposed wilderness areas for drilling; and 13 public land orders issued by the Department of the Interior (DOI) that opened lands for drilling that had previously been off limits. In contrast, Clinton's DOI issued just eight public land orders that opened lands for drilling, and protected land in the aggregate with 11 other public land orders restricting drilling.

The current administration has protected far less land from drilling than the previous administration. Ninety-nine designations for wilderness areas that protected lands from drilling were signed by Clinton, compared to 25 signed by President Bush. Three new national parks were created under Clinton's tenure; none have been created since Bush took office. President Clinton created 17 national monuments that restrict drilling activity, and 22 national wildlife refuges; President Bush has created none.

Favoring Oil and Gas

The Bush administration first indicated that it was predisposed to favor drilling on federal lands by issuing a series of documents in 2001. In the White House's National Energy Policy Report, directed by Vice President Dick Cheney, and released in May 2001, the report's authors called for "an Executive Order directing all federal agencies to include in any regulatory action that could significantly and adversely affect energy supplies a detailed statement on the energy impact of the proposed action."

The report also stated that the President should direct the Secretary of the Interior to "[e]xpedite the ongoing Energy Policy and Conservation Act study of impediments to federal oil and gas exploration and development" and "review public lands withdrawals and lease stipulations, with full public consultation, especially with the people in the region, to consider modifications where appropriate" (NEPG 2001, 5-7). Land withdrawals refers to land that is declared off-limits to oil and gas development while lease stipulations provide protections for land, water, wildlife, and cultural resources.

Consistent with the report's advice, President Bush issued two executive orders in May 2001. One order provided that agencies shall prepare a detailed analysis of any action that "is likely to have a significant adverse effect on the supply, distribution, or use of energy" (Executive Order 13211, 2001). The other order stated that "for energy-related projects, agencies shall expedite their review of permits or take other actions as necessary to accelerate the completion of such projects, while maintaining safety, public health, and environmental protections" (Executive Order 13212, 2001).

The administration then modified federal land use policy in favor of oil and gas production by issuing a memorandum to all BLM land managers. The memo stated that land use managers should continue to issue leases and drilling permits in areas for which new land use plans had not yet been finalized. This policy overturned an existing federal rule that no new leases would be issued while land use plans were being redrawn. The goal of this older policy was simply to ensure that ecological, historical or cultural resources would not be lost before managers could implement a new land use plan (BLM Leasing Instruction Memo 2001, TWS 2004). In a recent reversal of course, the Interior Deparment told BLM state and regional officers that they may postpone leasing if they were in the process of developing new resource management plans that establish long-term federal land-use policies (Eilperin 2004).

Oil and Gas: Number One Priority

The administration became more overt in its efforts to make oil and gas drilling a priority in 2002 when the BLM issued a memo to land managers in Utah. "Utah needs to ensure that existing staff understand that when an oil and gas lease parcel or when an [application for permission to drill] comes in the door, that this work is their No. 1 priority," the memo read (Egan 2002, TWS 2004).

End Run Around Protections

Recent reports from BLM field offices in Wyoming indicate that the BLM may often waive environmental protections at the request of gas and oil companies. The Pinedale Field Office in western Wyoming granted at least 251 exceptions to protections for wildlife between September 2002 and July 2003 while the Rawlins Field Office in southern Wyoming reported that since October 2003, it has granted 66 exceptions to protections for wildlife (BLM Pinedale Wildlife Exceptions 2003, BLM Pinedale Sage Grouse Exceptions 2003, BLM Pinedale Raptor Exceptions 2003, BLM Rawlins Exceptions 2004).

Opening Wilderness to Oil and Gas Drilling

WHAT THEY SAY:

"...it's our view that on both the issues that relate to natural gas as well as domestic oil production, there are obviously impediments with respect to access which have been a major issue..."

— Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy, 2003 (Abraham 2003)

As a result of a backroom settlement in 2003 between Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, and then-governor of Utah and current EPA administrator, Mike Leavitt, the Bush administration has opened thousands of acres of wilderness quality federal land to oil and gas development. Following the deal, the BLM has already leased for oil and gas development 33 parcels of Utah land covering more than 18,000 acres that the BLM had previously designated as potential wilderness (EWG Utah Report 2004, Bloch 2004).

The seeds of the deal originated in 1996 when then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ordered a wilderness inventory of land in Utah as an effort to help resolve a controversy over the proper amount of wilderness in the state. Conservationists had charged that a previous agency inventory of BLM land had overlooked wilderness areas (BLM Utah Inventory 1999, Bloch 2004).

The same year, the state of Utah alleged in a lawsuit that the federal government was exceeding its authority by conducting the inventory. But in 1998, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Utah essentially had no legal standing to challenge BLM's analysis. The 10th Circuit remanded the case to federal district court in Utah where it lay dormant for approximately five years (BLM Utah Inventory 1999, Utah v. Babbitt 1998).

Meanwhile, in 1999, a BLM-assembled team that included some of the Bureau's "most experienced wilderness professionals" issued a report identifying 2.6 million acres of federal land in Utah as having wilderness characteristics — a finding that substantiated the conservationists' concerns. Between 1999 and 2003, BLM deferred approving most proposed development that would have damaged these characteristics pending further actions that could have designated the land as officially protected Wilderness Study Areas (BLM Utah Inventory 1999, Bloch 2004).

Then, in 2003, Utah's lawsuit that had been sitting idle in district court resurfaced in the form of the Norton-Leavitt settlement. In the deal, the Bush administration acquiesced to the state's demands and stripped the potential wilderness protection from the inventoried lands, including red-rock canyon land and rock formations in southeast Utah. The administration also stated that the BLM lacked the authority to protect additional land in other states as wilderness unless Congress formally designated the land as wilderness (BLM Utah Memo 2003, Utah Settlement 2003), a decision that has national ramifications.

As a result of this secretly-negotiated agreement, thousands of acres of potential wilderness may be lost forever because BLM can no longer provide interim protection for additional potential wilderness and it is unlikely that Congress can designate as wilderness an area that has already been developed. According to the 1964 Wilderness Act, land must be "untrammeled by man" to receive a designation as wilderness. Once land receives such a designation, "no commercial enterprise and no permanent road" is allowed inside the area (The Wilderness Act 2003).

Not Leasing: Increasingly Not an Option

In February 2004, the Bush Administration turned up the heat even higher on BLM land managers who might deny a lease request on a particular parcel of public land. "[A] decision not to lease that extends beyond the [sic] one year could be considered a change in land use allocation outside of the planning process that effectively removes large parcels of land from mineral development without following appropriate planning procedures," wrote BLM Director, Kathleen Clarke, to BLM staff. If a manager of an area operating under a land use plan determines that a tract should not be leased in an area currently open to leasing for more than one year, Clarke added, "the manager should strongly consider a plan amendment, with an appropriate range of alternatives, [National Environmental Policy Act] analysis and public participation." In addition, Clarke wrote that when a parcel is not offered for leasing, "[t]he State Director must provide a letter to those who submitted the expression of interest for the tract, stating the reasons for not offering the parcel(s), the factors considered in reaching that decision, and an approximate date when analysis of new information bearing on the leasing decision is anticipated to be complete and when a decision to lease (or amend the [land use] plan) is expected to be made" (BLM February Memo 2004). As the Wilderness Society has noted, this memo suggests a strong presumption that land must be leased. Yet there is no requirement under federal law that a land manager must lease federal land. In fact, the decision is discretionary (TWS 2004 Leasing Rules 2004).

Governors Protest Drilling

The Bush Administration has continued to lease federal lands in such a reckless manner that it has drawn protests this year from the governors of New Mexico and Wyoming. The protest from Bill Richardson, New Mexico's Governor, came after the BLM announced that it was going to double the area open to the least restrictive form of oil and gas leasing in Otero Mesa, a fragile grassland in south-central New Mexico. Wyoming Governor, Dave Freudenthal, protested a lease sale in the heavily-leased Pinedale area in the northwestern portion of his state. Fruedenthal argued that further leasing would jeopardize critical wildlife habitat and that BLM should postpone new leasing until BLM issues a new land use plan for the area. The current level of oil and gas development, he wrote, already far exceeds that envisioned by the existing land use plan (see section on Otero Mesa for New Mexico's gubernatorial protest; see Freudenthal 2004 for Wyoming's gubernatorial protest).

Declining Oil Production, Increasing Natural Gas

Despite an increased emphasis on drilling, crude oil production on U.S. onshore lands (federal and private) have generally fallen. In 2001 crude oil production fell to 96 percent of production rates achieved in the previous year (EIA Onshore Oil 2002).

Oil production on onshore U.S. lands generally declined during the 1990s from 6.3 million barrels of oil per day in 1990 to 3.8 million barrels per day in 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available (EIA Onshore Oil 2002).

Natural gas production from onshore U.S. lands generally increased during the 1990s from 16.5 trillion cubic feet in 1990 to an estimated 19 trillion cubic feet in 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available (EIA Onshore Natural Gas 2002).

References

Bureau of Land Management (BLM Leasing Instruction Memo 2001). Instruction Memorandum No. 2001-191 (August 3, 2001). Accessed online June 18, 2004 at http://www.blm.gov/nhp/efoia/wo/fy01/im2001-191.html.
Bloch, Stephen, staff attorney, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Personal Communication. February 17, 2004.
Bureau of Land Management Rawlins Field Office (BLM Rawlins Exceptions). 2003-2004. Wildlife, Greater Sage-grouse & Raptor Winter Range Exceptions to Date, October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2004. The report was last updated June 18, 2004.
Bureau of Land Management Pinedale Field Office (BLM Pinedale Wildlife Exceptions). 2003. Wildlife Winter Range Exceptions 2002-2003. The report was last updated December 26, 2002.
Bureau of Land Management Pinedale Field Office (BLM Pinedale Sage Grouse Exceptions). 2003. Sage Grouse Winter and Nesting Exceptions 2002-2003. The report was last updated August 1, 2003.
Bureau of Land Management Pinedale Field Office (BLM Pinedale Raptor Exceptions 2003). 2003. Raptor Winter and Nesting Exceptions 2002-2003. The report was last updated August 1, 2003.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM Utah Inventory). 1999. Utah Wilderness Inventory, 1999. Accessed online June 22, 2004 at http://w3.access.gpo.gov/blm/utah/.
Bureau of Land Management Instruction Memorandum No. 2003-274 (BLM Utah Memo). 2003. Accessed online June 22, 2004 at http://www.leaveitwild.org/nowilderness/index.html.
Bureau of Land Management Instruction Memorandum No. 2004-110. Accessed online June 23, 2004 at http://www.blm.gov/nhp/efoia/wo/fy04/im2004-110.htm.
Egan, Timothy (Egan). 2002. The New York Times. Bush Administration Allows Oil Drilling Near Utah Parks. February 8, 2002, 14.
Eilperin, Juliet. 2004. Interior May Delay Oil and Gas Projects. August 18, 2004, pg. A17.
Energy Information Administration (EIA Onshore Oil). 2002. Annual Energy Review, 2002, Petroleum. Table 5.2. Accessed online August 18, 2004 at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/petro.html.
Energy Information Administration (EIA Natural Gas). 2002. Annual Energy Review, 2002, Natural Gas. Table 6.4. Accessed online August 18, 2004 at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/natgas.html
Environmental Working Group. 2004. Public Land Policy Alert. February 18, 2004. Accessed online June 22, 2004 at http://www.ewg.org/reports/UT_oil&gas/.
Executive Order 13212 of May 18, 2001. 2001. Actions To Expedite Energy-Related Projects. Accessed online June 18, 2001 at http://www.archives.gov/federal_register
/executive_orders/2001_wbush.html.
Executive Order 13212 of May 18, 2001. 2001. Actions To Expedite Energy-Related Projects. Accessed online June 18, 2001 at http://www.archives.gov/federal_register
/executive_orders/2001_wbush.html.
Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). 2004. 43 U.S.C. 1701(8), (12) (2004).
Freudenthal, Dave. Governor Protests Additional Leasing in Pinedale Area. Press Release. June 8, 2004. Accessed online June 23, 2004 at http://wyoming.gov/governor/press_releases
/2004/june2004/leaseprotest.asp.
Leasing Rules (Leasing Rules). 30 U.S.C.S. 226 (2004).
NEPG (National Energy Policy Group). 2001. National Energy Policy. Accessed online June 17, 2004 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/.
Stipulation and Joint Motion to Enter Order Approving Settlement and to Dismiss the Third Amended and Supplemented Complaint (Utah Settlement). 2003. U.S. District Court, District of Utah, Central Division, April 11, 2003.
Utah v. Babbitt (Utah v. Babbitt) 137 F.3d 1193 (1998).
The Wilderness Act. 16 U.S.C.S. §§ 1131, 1133 (2003).
The Wilderness Society (The Wilderness Society). 2004. Issue Brief. Abuse of Trust: A Brief History of the Bush Administration's Disasterous Oil and Gas Development Policies in the Rocky Mountain West.