To: Reporters and Interested Parties
From: Jesse Prentice-Dunn, Policy Director, Center for Western Priorities
Re: Dashboard tracks oil and gas leasing under Trump administration
The Trump administration has spearheaded an effort to lease vast areas of publicly-owned resources to oil and gas companies, oftentimes for bargain rates. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak and tumbling oil and gas prices, the oil and gas industry has asked the administration to speed up drilling permits on public lands, lower royalty rates, and buy up reserves. Additionally, the administration has stated it will continue offering oil and gas leases, with multiple auctions scheduled in the coming months.
In an effort to quantify the scale of leasing under the Trump administration, the Center for Western Priorities has developed a dashboard to track onshore oil and gas leasing. The Center for Western Priorities’ tracker will be continuously updated, reflecting the results of oil and gas lease sales around the country.
As part of the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda, tens of millions of acres have been offered up for lease, far more area than the oil and gas industry has been interested in purchasing. The Bureau of Land Management holds quarterly auctions to sell leases for oil and gas development. To start the process, oil and gas companies nominate parcels to be leased for drilling. Leases are then sold for as little as $2 per acre, the minimum bid required to purchase a lease. Many oil and gas leases end up sitting idle, preventing those lands from being managed for conservation. In total, 24.2 million acres have been offered for oil and gas leasing since 2017, an area equivalent to the size of Indiana. Of those leases, just 5 million acres have been purchased for development. 971,248 acres have been leased for just $2 per acre.
Quarterly oil and gas lease sales will continue through 2020, with parcel information for each sale posted on the Bureau of Land Management’s oil and gas leasing website. Oil and gas lease sales are scheduled in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Eastern States in the coming weeks. The dashboard will be updated to reflect the results of these lease sales and future sales.
The oil and gas leasing dashboard can be viewed here.
The oil and gas leasing dashboard can be viewed here.