http://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/08/federal-government-holding-back-oil-production-federal-lands/Who Owns One-Third of American Land -- And How It's Holding Us Back
Amy Payne
May 8, 2014 at 6:30 am
Did you know that the federal government owns nearly one-third of U.S. land?
What are they doing with it, you might ask. And the answer is certainly not making the most of it.
In fact, true to form, the federal government is getting in the way of domestic energy and American jobs.
“Inaccessibility and unnecessary regulations inhibit economic growth in various parts of the country,” says Heritage expert Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow. He points to a recent study showing that “opening up offshore areas for drilling in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf — just one region where offshore drilling is possible but not permitted — would create 280,000 jobs in that region alone.”
While U.S. oil production has gone gangbusters in recent years, most of that production has been on privately owned land.
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