Biden administration moves forward with first onshore oil and gas lease sales despite climate goals

Today, the Biden administration began its first onshore oil and gas lease sales, putting over 125,000 acres of public lands up for auction to the fossil fuel industry. The Interior Department took beneficial steps in advance of the sale, enacting needed reforms to ensure that taxpayers get a fairer return for leasing public lands to industry, and significantly reducing the ultimate number of acres being put up for bid based on wildlife habitat, cultural, and other screening criteria. However, these sales are proceeding despite known and serious deficiencies in the oil and gas program and the worsening climate crisis.

These lease sales stand in stark contrast to the administration’s bold and necessary climate commitments, including reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. 

In response, The Wilderness Society Climate Solutions Director Natalie Mebane said:

“Despite their fear-mongering, oil and gas CEOs and their lobbyists know well that these lease sales will do absolutely nothing to lower prices at the pump or provide consumers relief. The fact is, new oil and gas leasing accomplishes one goal: locking us into decades more climate pollution while deepening our dependence on expensive fossil fuels, harming our health, polluting our communities, and shutting us out from public lands.

“Instead, we need radical honesty and aggressive creativity from the administration and other leaders in Washington to drive forward real changes that help us all break free from the deadly stranglehold of our dependence on a fossil fuel economy. That means following through on the promise to enact a robust conservation and climate plan for public lands, driving real support for a just economic transition, rapidly and responsibly increasing renewable energy, and holding oil and gas companies accountable.”

END

For more information, contact Tony Iallonardo at newsmedia@tws.org.