Today, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced plans for more oil and gas lease sales in 2023. These will be the second federal onshore oil and gas lease sales scheduled for 2023. In total, the sales announced today will offer 95,411 acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah.

In response to the news, Taxpayers for Common Sense released the following statement from vice president Autumn Hanna:

“For decades, taxpayers have lost billions of dollars to a broken oil and gas leasing system sorely in need of reform. Despite this, today the Department of the Interior proposed to offer nearly 100,000 acres in Utah and Nevada. Without solidifying important reforms to the onshore oil and gas leasing system taxpayers will continue to lose. The Biden Administration must follow-up on the actions recently taken by Congress with new rules that will bring the federal oil and gas program into the 21st Century. This includes ending speculative leasing on lands with little oil and gas drilling potential and fixing outdated bonding rates. Anything less will allow oil and gas companies to lock public lands out of other uses and force taxpayers to pay the cleanup costs when production ends. The rulemaking process is critical to ensure the program better serves everyone and stops undermining taxpayers.”

Background

On Monday, November 21, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced plans for two new oil and gas lease sales in 2023. The sales will offer a total of 95,411 acres of federal land for oil and gas development – 63,603.89 acres in Nevada and 31,808 acres in Utah. The sales will include reforms implemented by the Inflation Reduction Act. This is the second federal onshore oil and gas lease sale scheduled for 2023 announced by the Administration; in October, DOI announced plans to offer over 261,200 acres of federal land in Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming in the second quarter of 2023.

For more than two decades, TCS has advocated for modernizing the federal oil and gas leasing system to give taxpayers a fair return on the resources we all own. DOI must take prompt actions to modernize oil and gas bonding requirements before moving forward with more lease sales, otherwise taxpayers will be saddled with more cleanup liabilities in the future. The DOI should also prioritize leasing in areas with known resource potential and avoid leasing that conflicts with recreation, wildlife habitat, conservation, and historical and cultural resources. Read more information on the leasing process and needed reforms here:

• The Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Process
• Abandoned Wells and Oil and Gas Bonding FAQ
• Oil and Gas Bonding on Federal Land
• Oil and Gas Bonding and Orphaned Wells Reform—General Principles & Options
• Oil and Gas Speculation on Federal Lands
• Scoring on Oil and Gas in Reconciliation