Biden’s Oil and Gas Rental Break Ends in Wyoming Next Year | Energy Journal

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The Petroleum Association is part of an ongoing lawsuit in Wyoming U.S. District Court that seeks to force the BLM to resume lease sales more quickly and retroactively suspend canceled sales to make up for lost state revenue . Wyoming’s last lease sale, in December 2020, brought in nearly $ 7 million in bids on 181 plots of land.

In 2019, before demand for oil cratered, the BLM named 719 Wyoming plots, eventually leasing 114 in March, 151 in June, 175 in September and 123 in December and generating nearly $ 53 million in revenue.

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Nationally, the BLM issued a total of 902 new leases in 2017, 1,333 in 2018 and 1,841 in 2019. In 2020, drilling operations and the logistics of selling leases were both interrupted by the pandemic. , this total fell to 899.

President Joe Biden’s Jan. 27 executive order suspending leasing was intended to give the Home Office time to revisit the program in response to climate change and other environmental concerns. But an interim report on the potential changes, due in June, has yet to be released, drawing criticism from climate, conservation and industry groups.

“The people of Wyoming have two things close to our hearts: common sense and public lands,” Josh Coursey, co-founder of the Muley Fanatic Foundation, a mule deer conservation group, said in a statement. “Going forward with sales of oil and gas leases on Wyoming federal lands without repairing the broken status quo goes against both.”

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