Two top Democrats on the US House Natural Resources Committee asked the Government Accountability Office to examine how many federal onshore oil and gas drilling permits are actually being used after the US Bureau of Land Management implemented reforms in 2017 following earlier investigations.
“Over the years, industry has raised concerns about both the time it takes BLM to review [drilling permit applications] as well as the backlog of applications at particular BLM field offices,” Ranking Minority Member Raul M. Grijalva (Ariz.) and Alan Lowenthal (Calif.), the Energy and Minerals Subcommittee’s top Democrat, said in their Feb. 1 letter to US Comptroller General Gene Dodaro at the congressional watchdog service.
“At the same time, however, reports in the press indicate that oil and gas companies have nearly 8,000 unused approved drilling permits, and BLM consistently approves more drilling permits than companies approved in a given year,” the lawmakers said. The agency approved 2,846 drilling permit applications in fiscal 2017 while producers started 1,424 wells, they noted.
To help the committee in particular—and Congress in general—evaluate resources BLM commits to processing drilling permit applications, Grijalva asked for a GAO investigation of determine:
• How BLM oil and gas drilling permit application review times have changed in the last 5 years, and what led to the changes.
• The number of unused approved permits there are currently, including the number which were granted extensions beyond the initial 2 years.
• What the reasons are for BLM to approve extensions or allow approved permits to expire.
“As BLM attempts to efficiently process drilling permit applications, it must focus on [those] that industry is most likely to drill,” Grijalva and Lowenthal said. “Otherwise, BLM staff would be expending limited resources to process permits that industry is unlikely to use.”
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