Senate Bill Is a Public Lands and Oceans Fire Sale
The Senate proposal uses vast public land sales as a Trojan horse to hide widespread evisceration of decades of public lands and oceans policy.
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Taking inspiration from the slash-and-burn approach of their colleagues in the House, the Republican leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released its contribution to a massive government spending bill. The text puts our shared public lands, forests, and oceans up for grabs by Big Oil and other industrial polluters, real estate developers, and logging companies, all to help fund tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s reverse Robin Hood in the starkest terms we’ve seen.
And even as many of the “pay-to-play” schemes proposed in the House were removed as the Senate Parliamentarian ruled against allowing polluters to be immune from judicial review upon payment of a fee, Senate leadership continues to advance horrific legislative language allowing industrial polluters to pay to limit the public’s ability to understand environmental impacts of projects. This means that oil, gas, coal, timber, and mining companies—which already receive extraordinarily favorable treatment under current laws—will be able to pay an upfront fee that will force agencies to complete rushed environmental analyses.
It remains a rigged scheme that auctions off fundamental environmental protections to try and boost fossil fuels in the era of runaway climate change.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s leadership continues, despite adverse rulings from the Parliamentarian, to press for expansive direct sales of public lands; the mandated leasing of hundreds of millions of acres for oil, gas, and coal production; and profound changes to our land and resource management laws that will cause generational damage to our shared natural heritage.
What the Senate has proposed here amounts to an endorsement of waste and abuse of our shared resources on a scale we haven’t witnessed in modern times.
Target: Public lands
Opening at least 10 million acres of public lands to nomination for sale and mandating that 600,000–1.2 million acres of these lands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) be sold within the next five years in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming
NOTE: The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled this provision is inappropriate for the budget bill. Until we see it formally struck from the text, we will continue advocating against its inclusion.
- Mandates quarterly oil and gas lease sales
- Hands over control of what is offered for lease to industry
- Lengthens drilling permit terms
- Prohibits requirements to limit environmental impacts of oil and gas production
- Revives and encourages the wasteful practice of non-competitive leasing
- Slashing royalty rates back to bargain-basement levels
- Mandates at least four 400,000-acre lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge within the next decade
- Mandates at least five 5 million–acre lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska within the next decade
- Severely limits environmental protections that can be placed on drilling and production activities
- Rubber-stamps all relevant permits to support new oil and gas development, including for roads, pipelines, and powerlines
- Rolls back rules meant to protect irreplaceable ecosystems, imperiled wildlife, and the Indigenous subsistence cultures they support
- Further entrenches Alaska’s economic dependence on fossil fuels
- Forces issuance of the BLM right-of-way for the Ambler Mining Road through the vast wilderness of the Gates of the Arctic National Park
- NOTE: The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled this provision is inappropriate for the budget bill. Until we see it formally struck from the text, we will continue advocating against its inclusion.
- Mandates the opening of 4 million acres of federal land to coal mining across the nation
- Expedites the issuance of new coal leases and mining permits
- Slashes royalties for existing and future coal production
- Automatically approves coal-mining plans on federal lands that provide miners with access to coal on private lands
Target: Offshore areas
- Requires at least 30 lease sales in the Gulf, each totaling at least 80 million acres
- Forces a reduction in critical environmental safeguards like protections for endangered and threatened marine mammals
- Rubber-stamps environmental review based on nearly decade-old information that ignores today’s conditions and the input of local communities
- NOTE: The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled this provision is inappropriate for the budget bill. Until we see it formally struck from the text, we will continue advocating against its inclusion
- Further chains Gulf state economies to the fossil fuel industry
- Requires six lease sales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, each totaling at least 1 million acres
- Locks in outdated lease terms and prohibiting new measures critical for protecting wildlife
Allowing oil and gas producers to tap multiple reservoirs with a single well, regardless of pressure differentials that could make managing the well dangerous, if not impossible
Cutting royalty rates to bargain basement rates of 12.5 to 16.6 percent, costing taxpayers billions in lost revenue and handing Big Oil another windfall
Target: National forests
- Creates, for the first time, a mandatory logging minimum on National Forest System lands requiring the Forest Service to sell progressively more timber every year for the next nine years
- Mandates that the Forest Service enter into at least forty 20-year logging contracts
- Creates, for the first time, a mandatory logging minimum on BLM-managed lands that requires the sale of progressively more timber every year for the next nine years
- Mandates that BLM enter into at least 20-year logging contracts
Target: National parks
Cuts the unspent portion of $750 million meant to support staffing, conservation, rehabilitation, and resilience of our cherished national parks
Cutting the unspent portion of $250 million meant to support the restoration of critical resources and habitats on our shared public lands
These approaches to the management of our natural resources are completely backward.
If Congress truly cared about managing the deficit, it would end taxpayer subsidies for trillion-dollar polluting industries, close polluter tax loopholes, and ensure corporations pay their fair share for developing publicly owned resources. It would safeguard our lands, forests, and oceans for future generations in recognition of the far greater value that functioning ecosystems bring to this country than the industries that have—for centuries—polluted our air and water and left behind a costly legacy of destruction. And it would advance clean, renewable energy to save money for consumers and the many costs associated with fossil fuel pollution and climate change.
This bill, however, is anti-science, anti-family, anti-worker, and anti-American.
Stop our wildlands & waters from being auctioned off to corporate polluters!
The current administration is planning to allow companies to drill and mine with little oversight—with practically no say from the public. But we won't ignore this.
Stop our wildlands & waters from being auctioned off to corporate polluters!
The Trump administration announced a plan that would allow companies to drill and mine with little oversight—with practically no say from the public. Plus, the Interior Department is looking to slash protections for several of our national monuments. Tell Interior Secretary Burgum to stop giving away our public lands and waters to corporate polluters!
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