The House Natural Resources Committee held a subcommittee hearing yesterday on a draft bill sponsored by Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert that would prevent the Interior department from completing a rule that implements reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing system, signed into law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
During the hearing, Rep. Boebert claimed that the rule is “proof that Joe Biden is using every tool in his administration to dismantle American energy production,” and went on to call it “unjustifiable.”
On the contrary, the rulemaking that is underway would simply implement the law as passed, and enact long-overdue reforms to the bonds that drillers have to post in order to ensure oil and gas wells are cleaned up if companies go bankrupt.
The recent reforms to the oil and gas leasing system are already working. It’s no wonder Representative Boebert wants to erase them and put industry back in charge of America’s public lands. When companies profit off publicly-owned oil and gas, the least they can do is clean up after themselves. Representative Boebert’s bill would let them walk away and leave taxpayers with the bill.
In the most recent Wyoming lease sale, companies didn’t even bother to bid on half of what the Bureau of Land Management put up for auction—all of it land nominated by the industry in the first place. More than 80 percent of the revenue from the lease sale came from less than four percent of the acres offered. In other words, oil and gas companies are already sitting on more public land than they know what to do with.
The proposed oil and gas rule is just common sense—that’s why more than 99 percent of public comments on the rule told the agency to adopt or even strengthen the rule. Representative Boebert’s bill would do the opposite. She is literally advocating for the one percent.
Aaron Weiss is Media Director for the Center for Western Priorities.