President Joe Biden is boasting no new drilling in the final days of a midterm campaign cycle in which high energy prices and his policies have been a top issue.
Although the rate of new oil and gas leasing under Biden has slowed compared to previous administrations, leasing and drilling have both continued, and at one point in 2021, the government was approving drilling permit applications at rates faster than some months during the Trump administration.
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Here’s the background:
What Biden said:
“No more drilling,” Biden said at a political rally for Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) on Sunday. “There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling.”
High fuel prices have set the tone and agenda for Biden for much of the year and exposed him to repeated attacks from Republicans who blame his energy policies, which generally are geared toward a swift phaseout of fossil fuels.
At the same time, the administration has faced immense pressure to stay the course on Democrats’ climate change agenda, a central tenet of which is ending new fossil fuel development.
The administration has responded to high prices primarily by drawing down and selling several hundred million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and making the case for a faster transition to electric vehicles and other alternative energy sources to insulate consumers.
In general terms, “drilling” used in political contexts typically refers to expansions of the extraction of oil and gas on public lands and in public waters, which the Department of the Interior manages under its mineral leasing programs.
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What Biden has done:
Biden promised on the campaign trail to ban new leasing on federal lands but has struggled in fulfilling that goal, and it has not translated into a cessation of drilling.
During his first week in office, Biden ordered a “pause” on all new leasing on federal lands and in federal waters pending a review of the leasing programs. The order did not include language restricting drilling.
But Republican states successfully sued over Biden’s order, and the administration later carried out new lease sales both onshore and offshore, pointing to a federal court’s order enjoining the leasing pause.
When Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ green energy and healthcare spending bill, he also locked in new leasing and new drilling by extension. The law included concessions to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that resurrected canceled offshore oil and gas lease sales, as well as language tying the expansion of renewable energy on federal lands, a priority of Biden’s, to continued leasing.
Biden has also encouraged the oil and gas industry to increase investment in new production to bring down prices.
Oil and gas interests and Republican allies have filed multiple lawsuits against the Biden administration for slow-walking new leasing, arguing that companies need the economic certainty that new leases provide.
Numbers under Biden
Overall oil and gas production, which includes public and private lands, has increased under Biden. That’s because the economy has been recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic during his tenure, and the sector has been picking back up from the shutdowns of 2020.
Higher production levels don’t necessarily imply new drilling is taking place on federal lands and waters, although new wells and new drilling permits have also continued during Biden’s nearly two years in office.
As of the end of August, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management had approved 2,711 drilling permit applications, or APDs, year-to-date during fiscal 2022.
Importantly, an APD is not a new well, something the White House noted especially frequently over the summer when gasoline prices reached their peak.
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Administration officials have often referred to the total volume of drilling permits available to operators, nearly 8,700 by the most recent count, to assert that the industry has all it needs to increase production.
Operators have been drilling new wells alongside new APD approvals, too. Year-end federal data show that operators began drilling operations on, or “spudded,” 1,630 new wells during fiscal 2021.
