Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

The public lands beat has been rather busy, to put it mildly, as the Biden administration rushes to finalize rules, orders, and protections as soon as possible to make them less vulnerable to being rolled back if Biden were to lose in November to, ummm, a more hostile candidate. Maybe Biden’s also working to more clearly distinguish himself on environmental issues from Trump in advance of the election — as if the stark contrast isn’t abundantly clear already. 

So much has happened that I’ve fallen behind. So forget the pre-amble, let’s get to it:

In late March, the Bureau of Land Management finalized its methane waste prevention rule, which requires oil and gas operators on federal lands to find and repair leaks in their infrastructure and to phase out flaring and venting of methane — a.k.a. natural gas. The rules complement the EPA’s similar regulations finalized earlier this year. 

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, having about 86 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the near-term (methane in the atmosphere breaks down into carbon dioxide and water over the long-term). While methane — which occurs alongside oil in underground reservoirs — can be captured and marketed as natural gas, oil drillers tend to vent or flare it and other associated gases, since it isn’t as profitable as oil. 

Between 2010 and 2020, after the “fracking”-enabled shale revolution got underway, oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land vented and flared an average of 44.2 billion cubic feet of methane annually. That’s as bad for the climate as burning around 9 million tons of coal. And since operators don’t pay royalties on gas they throw away,  that cost American taxpayers some $166 million in lost revenue over a decade. 

The rules look to rein that in by gradually decreasing the maximum amount of methane that can be flared or vented and charging royalties on the gases that are wasted. It is expected to slash greenhouse gas emissions and result in about $50 million annually in added royalty revenue. 

Methane Madness: Part I — Jonathan P. Thompson

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A few days later, the administration finalized its ban on new oil and gas leases and mining claims on about 220,000 acres along Western Colorado’s Thompson Divide. The protections cover a stretch of high-country BLM and USFS land between Glenwood Springs, Crested Butte, and Somerset. It does not affect valid, existing leases or claims. 

In the early 2000s an eclectic group of environmentalists, ranchers, and recreational users banded together to protect the Divide from the growing threat of oil and gas development. Their efforts goaded the feds to halt new development and cancel existing leases on much of the acreage, long before this spring’s move. Meanwhile, a similar uprising in the Crested Butte area blocked a proposed molybdenum mine on Mt. Emmons, or the Red Lady. 

The administration’s withdrawal bolsters these efforts and blocks new development for the next 20 years. By then, one would hope, the administration’s demand-side efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption — including encouraging clean energy development and pushing zero-emission cars — will have kicked in. 

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And Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland raised royalty rates and reclamation bonding amounts for oil and gas drilling on federal land. This one was a long-time coming. The previous 12.5% royalty rate has remained unchanged since Congress passed the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920. And oil and gas drillers have been getting away with posting bonds for all of their wells in a state that don’t get anywhere near covering the cost of cleaning up a single well. 

Environmentalists welcomed the reforms, but also criticized them for failing to address climate impacts of oil and gas development on public lands. Oh, and then there’s the thing about the faulty math: Mark Olalde and Nick Bowlin, for ProPublica and Capital & Main, found that even the new bonding amounts wouldn’t cover clean up. The problem? A BLM staffer miscalculated the cost to plug and reclaim a single well, and the inaccurate figure got incorporated into the analysis and final rule. Whoops. 

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The administration blocked new oil and gas leases on 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. That’s a huge amount of land and especially remarkable given that it’s in a petroleum reserve and it’s likely to result in some 50% less greenhouse gas emissions than Trump’s plan for the same area. Still, it may not be enough for the climate hawks who remain livid over the administration’s approval of a scaled-back, but still gargantuan, Willow (a.k.a. “carbon bomb”) drilling project in the reserve. Meanwhile, Biden’s Willow approval is not enough to soothe the anger of Alaska’s congressional delegation — including Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola — who blasted Biden for ignoring Alaska’s love for fossil fuels and called it an “illegal” move that dealt a “one-two punch” to the state’s economy. You just can’t win for losing, can you? 

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And last, but certainly not least: The Bureau of Land Management finalized its public lands rule, designed to put conservation on a par with oil and gas development, grazing, and other extractive uses.

The rule’s main provisions include: 

• It directs the agency to prioritize landscape health in all decision making, which is what it’s already supposed to do when assessing grazing allotments. It hasn’t done a very good job at that, so far. 
• It creates a mechanism for outside entities — states, tribes, or nonprofits — to lease public land for restoration projects — much as a rancher or oil and gas company might lease BLM land. 
• It allows firms to lease land for mitigation work to offset impacts from development elsewhere. 
• It clarifies the process for designating areas of critical environmental concern, or ACECs, where land managers can add extra regulations to protect cultural or natural resources. 
• And it directs the agency to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into decision-making, particularly when considering ACECs. 

The rule is being hailed by conservationists as a “generation-defining shift” in public land management, and lambasted by Sagebrush Rebel-wannabes as a “misguided land grab meant to prevent oil and gas production … <and> … an attack on our ranchers and farmers that will end grazing on federal lands and will also prevent Coloradans from accessing their public lands.” (A gold star to whoever guesses which MAGA-loving congress member made the latter grossly misinformed quote!).

Honestly, I’m not sure either side’s hoohas are warranted. It’s hard to see how a couple new leasing categories will be generation defining, I kinda doubt the rules will affect oil and gas production, and I’m absolutely certain they won’t end grazing or otherwise block access to public lands. 

The rule doesn’t add any new restrictions or put any land off-limits to development. It doesn’t give greens the power to kick a legitimate drilling, mining or grazing operation off public land to do a restoration or mitigation project. The mitigation leases could actually facilitate energy development. As for grazing, the Biden administration has indicated it considers ranching to be a type of land conservation, a theory that is manifested in the BLM’s policy of veering away from public lands grazing reform. Grazing is allowed in most ACECs. And the agency just set the 2024 grazing fee at $1.35 per animal unit month, the minimum Congress allows. I think the cows and their ranchers will be just fine under this new rule.

It seems to me that this rule’s provisions are fairly open to interpretation. That means the actual implementation — and how it plays out on the ground — will depend largely on BLM state, regional, and field-office managers. And those local-level bureaucrats can be swayed by the prevailing attitudes of the communities where they live and work, and by pressure from local or state officials. 

In the end, the rule is essentially a reminder to the BLM that their job is not just to bend over for corporate and extractive interests, but to actually care for the land that belongs to all Americans. It is simply reinforcing the multiple-use charge Congress set forth when it passed the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act back in 1976. It’s not that big of a deal. But then again, FLPMA helped spark the Sagebrush Rebellion in the late 1970s. So who knows what this rule might inspire now…

📸 Parting Shot 🎞️