The second-worst part of land management under US Interior Sec. Ken Salazar is duplicity. The worst part is a systematic slowdown in development of oil and gas resources.
Salazar's pattern has been described here before: He claims to be addressing reckless leasing of the Bush administration. He says he's injecting caution into a nevertheless brisk leasing program in service to national energy interests. Then he slows leasing and discourages related work. Since taking office early last year, Salazar has withdrawn leases, rescinded an oil shale leasing program, supported legislation that will prevent or impede leasing of 28 million acres, and shortened terms of offshore leases on which drilling doesn't proceed according to his schedule (OGJ, Nov. 23, 2009, p. 18).
This is no way to develop energy supply. This is no way to create jobs.
Creating delay
Salazar now has announced onshore leasing reforms certain to create delay and thwart activity (see story, p. 33). Among other things, the reforms will limit use of categorical exclusions, which the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created to streamline environmental reviews. True to form, the interior secretary claimed to be correcting the Bush administration's "anywhere, anyhow" policy while pressing forward with a healthy leasing schedule. Neither claim is valid.
Salazar selectively offers leasing figures to imply his department harbors no reluctance to make federal land available for oil and gas leasing. In a press conference on the new onshore rules, he averred that the Bureau of Land Management in 2009 held 35 offering of onshore leases involving 2,542 parcels covering 2.9 million acres.
To Americans unfamiliar with the issue, those numbers might seem to describe a robust effort. To them, Interior thus might appear to be meeting its statutory obligations to offer public land for oil and gas development. To those Americans, therefore, industry protestations can seem unfounded. Salazar played to these impressions when he said, "I think those in the industry who are crying out are crying out because we're being careful and supporting development in the right way in the right places."
In fact, onshore leasing has slowed remarkably. Environmentalists opposed to oil and gas work know this and know enough about leasing numbers to be pleased. An offering of 2,542 parcels in 12 months represents a shrunken program. In late November, Salazar said BLM in 2009 had sold 1,212 of 2,346 parcels offered. At that rate, it will have issued 1,313 leases in calendar 2009.
Indeed, that's much less leasing than occurred during the Bush administration. According to calculations from BLM data, the federal government issued an average of 2,976 leases/year during 2001-08. Through that period, Salazar said in the press conference, BLM worked as a "candy store" for the petroleum industry, representatives of which were "kings of the world." The implication is that—with BLM acting as "essentially the handmaiden of the industry"—onshore oil and gas leasing surged ahead under Bush and that the interior secretary now is bringing it back under control.
If Salazar's premise is true, leasing during the Bush term should have exceeded activity of prior years. By the best measure of the propensity to lease—leases issued—it did not. The average number of leases issued per year during the Clinton administration was 3,796—28% above the Bush rate.
So Salazar is wrong when he claims to be sustaining leasing at healthy levels; in fact, he's discouraging an activity that's good for employment and essential to energy supply. And he's wrong in his portrayals of the Bush tenure as a period of unbridled leasing; in fact, average annual onshore leases per year in that period declined.
Troubling prejudice
Salazar's rhetorical slaps at the oil and gas industry should trouble anyone concerned about energy supply. They reveal prejudice substantiated by the interior secretary's record of leasing resistance. It's a record that contradicts US energy and employment imperatives. And it's a record spun out of a pattern of misrepresentation.
The US needs better stewardship of federal oil and gas resources than Salazar so far has provided.
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