Page 4 - NorthAmOil Week 16 2022

NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil

Biden administration restarts

onshore lease sales

The administration of US President Joe Biden has relaunched federal onshore

lease sales, but with less acreage on offer than the industry had asked for

US THE administration of US President Joe Biden sales were being restarted in compliance with
announced on April 15 that it was restarting oil that ruling.
WHAT: and gas leasing on federal land. The move marks This follows the restart of offshore federal
The Biden administration the end of a pause on new onshore federal leas- lease sales in the US Gulf of Mexico last year
has started up onshore ing that was imposed in the early days of Biden’s with Lease Sale 257, held in November. The
federal lease sales again. presidency. sale generated more than $190mn – the high-
The US Department of the Interior (DoI) est amount since 2019 – on 1.7mn acres (6,880
WHY: said it was offering roughly 173 parcels on square km) sold. However, the restart did not
The move is being made 144,000 acres (583 square km) up for sale. The go smoothly and its results were subsequently
in compliance with a US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part invalidated by a US District Court in January
court ruling last year. of the DoI, then started issuing individual sale 2022 on the grounds that the Biden administra-
notices for specific regions. tion had failed to properly account for the auc-
WHAT NEXT: tion’s impact on climate change.
Less acreage will be on Lease sale saga That decision came after environmental
offer than the industry The development is the latest in a saga that has groups brought a legal challenge against the
had wanted, and higher been playing out since Biden first took office, lease sale. They argued that the administration
royalty rates will be pledging to be tougher on the oil and gas indus- had been relying on a years-old environmental
charged. try on environmental grounds. Indeed, he had analysis that did not accurately consider the
pledged to end federal oil and gas leasing alto- greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would
gether during his electoral campaign. result from blocks sold during the auction.
But while a review carried out by the DoI last US District Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed,
year found “significant shortcomings” in the faulting the administration for excluding for-
existing federal leasing programmes, it stopped eign consumption from its GHG emissions
short of saying new leasing should be banned analysis and saying it had not taken the latest
outright. In the meantime, a US District Court scientific findings about the role of oil and gas
overturned the pause in federal leasing in June development in climate change into account.
2021, and the DoI noted last week that lease The court ruling appears to have derailed new

US President Joe Biden
has been seeking to
prioritise environmental
targets since taking
office but is also calling
on the industry to
produce more oil.

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 16 21•April•2022