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BLM memo streamlining oil, gas leasing 'likely to increase production'

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BLM memo streamlining oil, gas leasing 'likely to increase production'

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management moved quickly to streamline the process for oil and gas drillers to buy federal leases onshore, a move that could increase Western oil and gas production but that environmental groups said they will fight.

A Jan. 31 memorandum from BLM Deputy Director for Policy and Programs Brian Steed, using the authority of the vacant BLM director's office, instructed BLM field offices to hold quarterly lease sales, shortened the time for review of potential lease parcels to six months and shortened the time for opponents to voice objections to any lease parcel being auctioned from a month to 10 days.

BLM offices will need permission from Washington to defer any lease parcels nominated by bidders from going to auction. The use of master leasing plans, an Obama-era device for distancing fossil fuel extraction from sensitive environmental areas, will also be eliminated as duplicating other environmental reviews.

ClearView Energy Partners analyst Kevin Book, a veteran observer of Washington's energy politics, was not surprised by the policy change. "Discretionary enforcement and guidance documents aren't as sexy as rollbacks and rescissions, but they can make a real-world difference when it comes to getting molecules out of the ground," Book said in an email. "In the case of BLM, the impacts of a new direction by political leadership may be even more pronounced, because we generally think of BLM as an 'enabling' (pro-business) regulator in terms of its culture and the statutes that govern its activities."

"Bottom line," Book said, "The leasing procedure isn't a game changer on its own, but it does appear to be part of an overall reorientation towards an 'enabling' stance that seems likely to increase production."

Oil and gas drillers in the Rocky Mountains, a group that relies heavily on access to federal lands, were encouraged. "We're very pleased with the leasing memorandum, and as a result have dismissed our lawsuit challenging the rotational lease sale schedule," said Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group for Rocky Mountain and other Western oil and gas producers. "If a company caught the cycle wrong, it could result in lease nominations taking a few years to come up for sale."

Shortening the protest period will keep objections limited to those who truly have an interest, Sgamma said, claiming environmental groups fill the leasing docket with objections aiming only to delay any sale. "What we've seen is the same environmental groups protesting parcels with boilerplate language that often had nothing to do with actual conditions on the ground. They would wait until the last day of the protest period to file that boilerplate language, so the extra time was just a waiting game," Sgamma said.

Environmental groups were horrified.

"It's deeply disturbing that the Trump administration wants to give fossil fuel companies free rein over our public lands without community input or analysis of environmental harms," Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a Feb. 1 statement. "Trump clearly puts profits ahead of public health, wildlife and wild places. But these changes won't speed up oil and gas leasing. They'll result in rushed, ill-considered, illegal decisions that will be overturned in court."

Sierra Club Lands Protection Director Athan Manuel called for the resignation of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. "Our public lands are for us all to enjoy — not for dirty fuel companies to destroy as they pollute our air, land, and water," Manuel said in a Feb. 1 statement. "It's past time Zinke resigns."