Biden Rejects Call To End Oil And Gas Drilling On Federal Lands

The Biden Administration has rejected a petition from hundreds of environmental organizations to consider rulemaking with which to end oil and gas production on public lands by 2035.

The Center for Biological Diversity and more than 360 other U.S. climate and conservation groups petitioned in early 2022 the Biden Administration requesting that the Secretary of the Interior promulgate regulations establishing a maximum production rate and a phasedown of existing onshore and offshore oil and gas production from public lands and waters.

Laura Daniel-Davis, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Land and Mineral Management at the Department of the Interior, said that the Administration rejects the petition and it couldn’t dedicate its limited resources to establishing a phase-down program.

“This Administration shares your concerns regarding the urgency of the climate crisis and is directing its limited resources in an effort to address them,” Daniel-Davis wrote in a letter to the organizations.

The campaigners responded to the rejection of their petition, with Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity saying,

“To claim that the Biden administration doesn’t have the resources to take real climate action on federal fossil fuels is vacuous and beyond hypocritical.”

“This is the definition of lip service. The administration acknowledges the urgency to address climate change and meanwhile avoids every opportunity to take meaningful action on the fossil fuels under its control,” McKinnon said.

Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, added, “The U.S. and the world need bold action to phase out fossil fuels. We will keep fighting and holding federal officials accountable.”

The Biden Administration continues to pursue a clean energy future for America, but it has recently angered environmentalists with approvals of oil and gas projects. One of the latest such approvals was the Administration giving the green light to ConocoPhillips to develop the Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), allowing three out of five proposed drill sites.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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