Blatant Reality

These new reforms give the department’s Bureau of Land Management the responsibility of determining what parcels of land will be leased instead of energy companies nominating areas they feel are promising to explore. Essentially, our future domestic energy production is now reliant on a government bureaucracy whose head has already made it fairly clear that he is not for increasing our domestic energy output through tried-and-true sources like oil and gas.

For example, Salazar’s statements concerning why changes and reforms are taking place in the Department of Interior’s leasing program hint at tilting the scale away from pro-business and pro-domestic energy development. These statements, like the one where he claims that “[w]e are not just about the business of letting the oil and gas industry run the Department of Interior” or that “the oil and gas industry essentially were the kings of the world” during the prior administration, definitely do not bode well for domestic energy producers.

Even though Salazar acknowledges the increase of environmental groups suing to overturn land leases granted by the Department of the Interior over the past decade has become a major problem that needs to be addressed, these reforms do not help companies gain these leases any faster or protect them from frivolous environmental lawsuits.

For example, instead of conducting a “quick” study to determine how the land will be used, the new plan calls for a “comprehensive review” which identifies interested individuals and allow for the public (or environmental groups) to comment on the study. Therefore, instead of having these applications bogged down in court, they will now be bogged down in the Department of the Interior’s lease approval bureaucracy.

Moreover, if the lease is finally granted to the energy company after the DOI’s comprehensive review, who is to say that the company still won’t have to face an environmental lawsuit since these internal reforms do not affect the judicial system?

Many of these environmental lawsuits are not about winning but instead just about delaying the company from drilling. As the saying goes, time is money, and many energy companies may decide to refrain from increasing domestic sources if the time between applying for a lease and starting production threatens to be too great.

While some reforms are needed in a Department where ethical failures and cover-ups were reported, no reforms are offered to help ensure that companies who receive leases are able to quickly begin drilling and not encumbered by environmental groups whose whole goal is to stop all drilling. Even though Congress may ultimately need to pass legislation, the Department of the Interior could have announced reforms to help ensure that environmental issues do not overshadow every chance to increase our domestic energy output.

With gas prices already a dollar more per gallon than a year ago, we are in need of more sources right here at home. While some argue that it will take a decade to bring these new sources online, they forget that these were the same arguments used a decade ago to halt the exploration and development of domestic sources for oil.

If we never start to develop our current domestic supplies, we will never be able to domestically meet our future energy demands.

Overall, if Salazar’s reforms and changes prove not to help make the leasing process smoother for energy companies, he will have lost an important opportunity to help increase our domestic energy production and meet the energy demands of an advancing nation.