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The Center for Western Priorities is excited to present a new dashboard that tracks oil and gas leasing and drilling on public lands during the Trump administration. Under the Biden administration, the BLM made many improvements to the federal leasing system. These reforms resulted in more targeted lease sales that directed companies to drill in areas with high energy potential and low environmental sensitivity, and they brought in more money per acre than the fire sale auctions held during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Between legislative proposals and administrative actions, the current Trump administration is set to take the irresponsible leasing practices that were rampant under the first Trump administration to the extreme. Westerners overwhelmingly oppose these changes, which would reduce local input on land management decisions, prioritize oil and gas over all other uses of public land, rollback safeguards for wildlife habitat, threaten clean water, hunting, fishing, and other recreation opportunities, and hurt taxpayers.
The dashboard illustrates the outcomes of the responsible leasing that has occurred since the Biden-era reforms went into place and will track the outcomes of the irresponsible leasing that is set to occur under the Trump administration. It includes data on how many acres of public land are offered at auction and how many are leased each year, how many unused leased acres and permits are currently held by the oil and gas industry, how much oil and gas is produced on federal lands each year, and the average price per acre of leased public land each year.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is still ugly for public lands
Last week, the House passed a version of the budget reconciliation bill that would be devastating for public lands, despite having slashed a handful of the most egregious provisions. In a new Westwise blog post, Center for Western Priorities Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger describes the major attacks on our nation’s public lands that remain as the bill heads to the Senate.
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Alaska owns a very high percentage of protected areas, like national parks. People want to see about the wonders of nature and of the environment—if you get away from that and turn it into a mining state where everything can be done, everything can be drilled, then we lose that market.”
