The Biden administration held its first onshore oil and gas lease sale in nearly a year, beginning a series of lease sales it plans to carry out across federal lands through the rest of the year.
The Bureau of Land Management auctioned off parcels totaling 10,123 acres in New Mexico and Kansas, a smaller area compared to several of the lease sales it carried out last June. Thursday's lease sale marks the beginning of a leasing revival of sorts, one brought on by provisions negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in the Inflation Reduction Act that a Democratic-controlled Congress passed in August, which included provisions incentivizing the Interior Department to lease more regularly for oil and gas.
BIDEN AND REPUBLICANS BLAME EACH OTHER FOR DEFAULT THEY INSIST WON'T HAPPEN
It also represents a major disappointment for environmental groups, including those generally aligned with President Joe Biden on climate change policy, that have campaigned heavily against new leasing and filed multiple lawsuits against the administration to thwart new leasing.
Biden pledged during his presidential campaign to crack down and even end new leasing and drilling on federal lands and in federal waters, ordering a pause on new leasing when he entered office.
Biden's order was eventually blocked by a federal court, driving the administration to carry out its first onshore lease sales last June. That series of lease sales covered multiple western states, including Wyoming and New Mexico, and were the only to be held since Biden was inaugurated until Thursday.
Republicans and the industry have criticized and, in some cases, sued the administration over the intermittent leasing, arguing that it violated the Mineral Leasing Act. The centuryold law provides that lease sales should be held "where eligible lands are available at least quarterly."
The administration and environmental groups have argued the bureau and the interior secretary have discretion over whether or not to hold lease sales or make lands available.
The Inflation Reduction Act, the energy and healthcare spending law passed in August, intervened with new directions. The law included language negotiated by Manchin requiring that the bureau hold regular oil and gas lease sales in order to issue rights-of-way for renewable energy on federal lands, a major priority of the Biden administration.
The Interior Department has pointed to those provisions to justify new leasing, displeasing environmentalists.
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Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, an environmental nongovernmental organization that is currently in court with the administration over leasing in New Mexico and other western states, said the bureau "continues to turn its back on its legal duty to account for the link between fossil fuel development and the climate crisis."
"Despite all the talk on climate, tomorrow's oil and gas lease sale in New Mexico continues to underscore the Biden administration is bending over backward to accommodate the demands of the oil and gas industry," Nichols told the Washington Examiner.