Editorial: Administration Reshaping Drilling Regulations

As Congress worked through its complicated dance on the economic stimulus bill—as the WJ went to press Thursday, the final conference version hadn’t been reported yet, but final votes were planned at the end of the week—other actions were taking place in Washington that caught our eye.

Less than a month in office, the Obama administration is already shifting the government’s approach to energy exploration on public lands. On February 4, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of federal land after opponents said the drilling would blight Utah’s scenic southeastern corner, the Washington Post reports. His decision, says the Post, “reverses the Bush administration’s move to allow drilling on 130,000 acres near pristine areas such as Nine Mile Canyon, Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument…” It is “one of a series of steps that the new administration and congressional Democrats are planning to reshape federal regulation of drilling, mining, lumbering, and other resource-tapping activities, both on U.S. soil and offshore.” We remind Salazar that the oil-drilling industry is able now to operate with a much smaller footprint than in the past. Animals don’t always mind it, but environmentalists do.

This signals a revolution in thinking about how the U.S. intends to improve its energy resources. We think it signals, beyond a doubt, that environmental law will ride roughshod over everything else. This very week the House Natural Resources Committee will hold its first of a series of meetings on offshore drilling. The Post cites Salazar as saying he intends to revamp the policies in consultation with Congress. With the Democrats in total command, does anyone want to guess how that will go? Nearly four decades of abusive environmental law enforcement probably will continue, hampering industrial expansion in numerous ways, only one of them being mitigation—the holding of project permits hostage until planners are willing to pay outrageous prices to buy land and donate it to environmental causes.

Back in Utah, Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, told the Post, “Natural gas producers in Utah and the intermountain West produce more than a quarter of the country’s natural gas on less than 1 percent of its public land.” She questioned why the administration would implement policies that would limit economic development in the West. She believes such legislation would “decrease energy security and make addressing climate change even more difficult.”

House Republicans, on February 4, urged Salazar to approve an offshore drilling plan drafted by Bush, but Salazar refused to say under what circumstances the administration would pursue offshore drilling, which was largely restricted until Bush and Congress lifted two moratoriums last year, the Post reported.

Environmental leaders laud the administration’s moves as restoring balance to the management of public lands.

We are seeing for the first time the beginnings of an environmentally led tsunami that surely will produce contention.

So, as said before, stayed tuned!

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