Energy Development

From its first week in office, the Bush administration has made energy development on public lands a top priority. Just four months after taking office, the administration issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to fast-track energy projects. The agencies -- particularly the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) -- have taken that order to heart.

			Related Places · The Powder River Basin · The Dome Plateau Related Players · David Bernhardt · Mike Smith · Kathleen Clarke · Rebecca Watson E-mail article Print article Learn more about -- or get involved in -- this issue: · The Union of Concerned Scientists · The Declaration of Energy Independence · Clean Energy Act Fact Sheet, from EnviroNet · E-mail the editor

From New Mexico's Otero Mesa region, to Utah's Dome Plateau, to the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, the BLM has rushed to approve permits for exploration and drilling. In 2001 and 2002 alone, the bureau approved more than 7,000 drilling permits in five western states alone -- Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. As of July 1, leases had been awarded on more than 5 million acres in those states alone. Then in April of 2003, the BLM approved the largest energy development project ever conducted on federal lands when it gave the green light to a plan to drill as many as 77,000 coalbed methane wells and more than 5,000 oil and gas wells in the Powder River Basin.

"It's not just public lands at risk, it's the ranchers, farmers and private landowners in the Powder River Basin whose livelihood and quality of life are jeopardized by the Bush administration's rapacious appetite for energy development," says Johanna Wald, director of the Nutural Resources Defense Council's land program. "The BLM's decision lit the fuse on a huge powder keg, and the administration is going to get burned."

Still, the biggest prize in the Bush administration's energy grab has to be the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. As a candidate, Bush repeatedly called for the reserve to be opened to oil exploration and drilling. And he followed that rhetoric with action, appointing outspoken proponents of drilling in the reserve to key policy positions in his administration. But, unlike the energy rush taking place in the Rocky Mountain states, opening the reserve to drilling will require an act of Congress. So far, the House and Senate have blocked the president's bids, but the White House is again on the offensive, linking drilling in the arctic reserve to

© 2003 The Foundation for National Progress

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