Legal Insurrection by Mary Chastain April 27, 2022
The cut includes an “area recognized as having high potential for oil discovery and development and therefore would be likely to be impacted if available to fluid mineral leasing and new construction.”Non-ethanol gas in Oklahoma City is $4.13. It was $4.25. Man, it went down a lot! #sarcasm
I shouldn’t complain because I know others have it worse. But still. Anything over $3 a gallon is a bit much for Oklahoma.
It might get worse because President Joe Biden ended a policy that makes millions of acres in Alaska unavailable for oil drilling.
In 2020, President Donald Trump’s administration left 18.5 million acres open in Alaska’s Natural Petroleum Reserve out of the total 22.8 million acre site for oil drilling.
The Bureau of Land Management decided to only leave 11.8 million acres (52%) of the land open. No one can touch the remaining 11 million acres (48%).
So over half of the site remains open but considering gas prices are through the roof and Russia is holding its energy sources hostage it’s time to drill baby drill!
BLM said the closure must happen “to protect and conserve important surface resources and uses in these areas.”
BLM even closed off an “area recognized as having high potential for oil discovery and development and therefore would be likely to be impacted if available to fluid mineral leasing and new construction.”
Yeah, let’s cut off a prime area. BLM claimed the area is important to numerous animals. All in the name of climate change, too:
By reducing the total amount of land in the NPR-A that is available to fluid mineral leasing and new infrastructure, the plan adopted by this Decision will likely result in less leasing over time. Depending upon the degree of development that may have occurred with increased leasing, this could result in reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the plan under the 2020 IAP/ROD. While the adoption of this plan itself does not directly generate GHG emissions, such emissions are a reasonably foreseeable consequence of making available lands within the NPR-A to oil and gas leasing and development. As such, adoption of this plan supports the administration and department’s commitment to addressing climate change by reducing the amount of land within the NPR-A that is available to fluid mineral leasing.
The Alaskan senators are not pleased:
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the decision will not help Americans.
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/04/biden-blocks-oil-drilling-on-millions-of-acres-in-alaskas-national-petroleum-reserve-for-oil/