The Bureau of Land Management announced plans to carry out an oil and gas lease sale on federal lands in Montana and North Dakota, expanding the list of new lease sales planned for the first half of 2023.
Its announcement represents another disappointment for environmental groups, which have been lobbying the administration to use its discretion to cease new leasing to limit climate change, at the hands of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who negotiated the law that mandated the sales.
The bureau said Friday it will begin taking input on plans to offer up to 20,951 acres in the upcoming lease sale, which will be the first to be held in either state since last summer. No date for the sale has been set.
The bureau also released an environmental assessment Friday for a separate oil and gas lease sale covering more than 10,000 acres in New Mexico and Kansas, which was announced in October and is planned for May.
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The bureau’s new lease sale plans also cover acreage in Wyoming, and all have been announced in recent months with explicit reference to compliance with the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ green energy and healthcare spending bill that became law in August.
The law included language tying the development of renewable energy resources on federal lands, a Biden administration priority, to the regular leasing of lands for oil and gas development.
Oil and gas leasing is a priority of Manchin’s, who leads the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and demanded that the leasing provisions be included in the Democratic legislation as a condition for casting the deciding vote in favor. Agreeing to the provisions was a considerable concession for other members of his party to make, as many oppose the expansion leasing and want to end the practice altogether.
The Biden administration has also sought to limit new leasing, something President Joe Biden promised to do on the campaign trail, as a means of slowing climate change, but the Interior Department has carried out multiple lease sales over the last year due to court rulings and directions from the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Environmental groups, key allies to Biden and his party, have implored the administration to act more aggressively against new leasing and have been disappointed at decisions to carry out new lease sales. The administration insists it is following congressional intent.
Industry groups and many Republicans have criticized the administration for holding fewer lease sales than previous administrations and for offering too little acreage to interested companies.
