The administration's decision not to cite the climate costs as a reason to limit leases frustrates environmental activists and others who have urged curbs in government fossil fuel sales. The so-called social costs of emissions from burning oil and gas from all the parcels - including more natural disasters, crop losses and public health problems due to climate change - are projected to range from $630 million to about $7 billion, according to land bureau documents. Still, Wyoming has the most land up for new leasing, roughly 280 square miles (725 square kilometers). The land bureau plans to defer leasing on almost 600 square miles (1550 square kilometers) in Wyoming, 213 square miles (550 square kilometers) in Colorado and 5 square miles (14 square kilometers) in Montana because of potential impacts to a struggling bird species, the greater sage grouse, and migrating pronghorn antelope. The leasing plans could change as the administration continues to analyze greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on people and the environment, administration officials said Tuesday. Similar statements were included in documents released for sales in other states. “BLM has limited decision authority to meaningfully or measurably prevent the cumulative climate change impacts that would result from global emissions,” agency officials wrote in their Montana lease proposal. The determination applies to lease sales planned early next year in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and other states. That's in part because they can’t discern the significance of emissions from government-owned fuel reserves versus other sources, officials wrote in newly released documents. Yet officials with the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said for now there’s little they can do to prevent the broad climate change impacts from burning fuels extracted from the remaining parcels. Hundreds of parcels of land that companies nominated for leasing were dropped from the sales because of concerns about wildlife being harmed by drilling rigs. President Joe Biden campaigned on pledges to end new drilling on public lands. emissions, making them a prime target for climate activists who want to shut down leasing.
West, despite the Interior Department's conclusion that doing so could cost society billions of dollars in climate change impacts, according to government documents.Īdministration officials announced last week that government regulators for the first time will analyze greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels extracted from government-owned lands across the U.S.īurning those fuels accounts for about 20% of energy-related U.S. (AP) - The Biden administration is planning to sell oil and gas leases on huge tracts of public land in the U.S.
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