U.S. government regulators will look at greenhouse gas emissions from drilling for oil and gas on federal lands for the first time on a national scale, as the Biden administration intensifies efforts to address climate change, he said. on Friday the Department of the Interior.
The announcement comes at a time when officials will keep leasing sales in numerous western states next year amid a fierce debate over federal reserves of fossil fuels.
The Office of Homeland Land Management released a report saying that the extraction of oil, gas and coal from federal lands produced more than 1 billion tons (918 million metric tons) of greenhouse gases last year. That’s about a fifth of all US energy-related emissions.
President Joe Biden campaigned on promises to end new drilling on public lands to help combat climate change. But his try to suspend new leases – while oil and gas sales underwent extensive review, blocked by a federal judge in Louisiana.
Including greenhouse gas emissions in lease reviews allows management to highlight what scientists say are the rising “social costs” of climate change, from rising sea levels and wildfires to problems of public health.
Democrats and many environmentalists want to factor in those up-front costs in lease sales. They argue that failure to do so amounts to a subsidy to the industry.
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But the change comes as rising energy prices expose the administration to strong attacks from Republicans.
Emissions have been declining in the US as power plants transition from burning coal to natural gas. Putting more roadblocks to development will hurt both the oil industry and the US economy, Republicans say.
Environmental assessments that include a greenhouse gas analysis will be released in the coming days for planned lease sales early next year in Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and other states, administration officials said.
The new director of the land office, Tracy Stone-Manning, who submitted a bitter confirmation fight, He said the agency wants to develop public lands responsibly and make sure climate impacts are considered.
“We will continue to exercise the authority and discretion provided by law to conduct the lease in a manner that complies with the legal responsibilities of the Department of the Interior,” Stone-Manning said in a statement.
#USA. To measure the climate damage of federal oil and gas sales. #USPoli #ClimateAction
Senior Republican member of the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, John Barrasso of Wyoming, said in response to Stone-Manning’s announcement that additional scrutiny of leases “would paralyze American energy.”
“Tracy Stone-Manning and the Bureau of Land Management want to build new regulatory locks for oil and gas leasing on US federal lands,” Barrasso said. “This draft plan will result in lower US energy production, fewer jobs for energy workers, and more frivolous demands from environmental activists.”
Some parcels that had been nominated by companies for sale have been deferred and will not be offered, officials said, citing concerns that include potential impacts on distressed populations of a bird, the greater sage grouse. They did not immediately respond to requests for details on the size and location of those packages.
Federal agencies have previously conducted reviews of the potential greenhouse gas impacts of individual lease sales throughout the western US following court orders. Officials in many cases concluded that emissions were miniscule on a global scale.
But environmentalists have long argued that those reviews were too narrow and ignored the cumulative impact of huge tracts of public lands in various states and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico that are leased for the extraction of oil, gas and coal.
The Department of the Interior determined in August that it was not conducting further climate impact studies on a Gulf of Mexico sale that is scheduled for next month, which covers approximately 136,000 square miles (352,000 square kilometers) of coastline.
Andrew Black of the National Wildlife Federation said including the full costs of energy development was crucial to understanding its impacts.
“This is not seen only as an environmental problem, but also as the climatic effects on communities facing devastating droughts, fires and floods,” said Black, who worked for Stone-Manning in the federation before joining the administration. . .
The oil and gas industry will continue to push for lease sales to take place this year, said Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group. A second lawsuit against the Biden administration is pending before a federal judge in Wyoming,
“How they use the social cost of carbon will be disputed,” Sgamma said. “That will affect regulation throughout the government, not just in this case.”
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com