Restoring American Energy Dominance

Biden’s war on fossil fuels has led to a dire adverse national impact.

The most important initiative for the DOI under a conservative President is the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons, much of which is yet to be discovered.

The U.S. depends on reliable and cheap energy resources to ensure:

• the economic well-being of its citizens
• the vitality of its economy
• its geopolitical standing in the world

This includes those owned separately by American Indian tribes and individual American Indians, both of which have been injured by Biden’s illegal actions.

The federal government owns 61% of the onshore and offshore mineral estate of the U.S.

But only 22% of the nation’s oil and 12 percent of U.S. natural gas comes from those federal lands and waters—and even that amount is declining. Additionally, 42 percent of coal production takes place on federal lands in 11 states.12 DOI manages a subsurface mineral estate of 700 million acres onshore and 1.76 billion acres offshore, for a total of 2.46 billion acres.

The total land area of the U.S. is 2.263 billion acres. Private and state lands, at 1.563 billion acres, make up only 39 percent of the total onshore and offshore subsurface area of the United States. Oil, natural gas, coal, and other minerals on federal lands and waters are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement; these agencies’ responsibilities frequently overlap with resource management by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state governments, and private property owners.

Biden is “aligning the management of…public lands and waters…to support robust climate action,” as envisioned in Executive Orders 14008 and 13990.13 One of his first actions was to ban federal coal, oil, and natural gas leasing on federal lands and waters to fulfill his campaign promise of “no federal oil,” followed by actions from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to rescind the Trump Administration’s Energy Dominance Agenda. To this end, DOI unilaterally overhauled resource management plans, lease sales, fees, rents, royalty rates, bonding requirements, and permitting processes to prevent new production of coal, oil, and natural gas on federal lands and waters; to dramatically increase production of solar and wind energy; and to accomplish its “30 by 30,” “America the Beautiful” agenda to remove federal lands from “multiple”—that is, productive—use.

DOI is abusing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)14 processes, the Antiquities Act,15 and bureaucratic procedures to advance a radical climate agenda, ostensibly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for which DOI has no statutory responsibility or authority.

The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OSCLA), General Mining Law,17 and other congressional acts clearly set forth multiple-use principles and processes that include production of coal, oil, natural gas, and other minerals, as legitimate activities consistent with the welfare of all Americans and of environmental stewardship.

Biden’s DOI is hoarding supplies of energy and keeping them from Americans whose lives could be improved with cheaper and more abundant energy while making the economy stronger and providing job opportunities for Americans. DOI is a bad manager of the public trust and has operated lawlessly in defiance of congressional statute and federal court orders.

ADMINISTRATION PRIORITIES

Rollbacks

A new Administration must immediately:

• roll back Biden’s orders

• reinstate the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda

• rescind Secretarial Order (SO) 3398

• review all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and similar agency actions made in compliance with that order.18 Meanwhile, the new Administration must immediately reinstate the following Trump DOI secretarial orders:

• SO 3348: Concerning the Federal Coal Moratorium

• SO 3349: American Energy Independence

• SO 3350: America-First Offshore Energy Strategy

• SO 3351: Strengthening the Department of the Interior’s Energy Portfolio

• SO 3352: National Petroleum Reserve—Alaska

• SO 3354: Supporting and Improving the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Program and Federal Solid Mineral Leasing Program

• SO 3355: Streamlining National Environmental Policy Reviews and Implementation of Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects”

• SO 3358: Executive Committee for Expedited Permitting

• SO 3360: Rescinding Authorities Inconsistent with Secretary’s Order 3349 “American Energy Independence"

• SO 3380: Public Notice of the Costs Associated with Developing Department of the Interior Publications and Similar Documents

• SO 3385: Enforcement Priorities

• SO 3389: Coordinating and Clarifying National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 Reviews

The new Administration must:

• Reinstate quarterly onshore lease sales in all producing states according to the model of BLM’s IM 2018–034, with the slight adjustment of including expanded public notice and comment.31 The new Administration should work with Congress on legislation, such as the Lease Now Act and ONSHORE Act,33 to increase state participation and federal accountability for energy production on the federal estate.
• Develop immediately and finalize a new five-year plan, while working with Congress to reform the OCSLA by eliminating five-year plans in favor of rolling or quarterly lease sales.
• Review all resource management plans finalized in the previous 4 years and, when necessary, select studied alternatives to restore the multi-use concept enshrined in FLPMA and to eliminate management decisions that advance the 30 by 30 agenda.
• Set rents, royalty rates, and bonding requirements to no higher than what is required under the Inflation Reduction Act
• Comply with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to establish a competitive leasing and development program in the Coastal Plain, an area of Alaska that was set aside by Congress specifically for future oil and gas exploration and development. It is often referred to as the “Section 1002 Area” after the section of ANILCA that excludes the area from Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s wilderness designation.
• Conclude the programmatic review of the coal leasing program, and work with the congressional delegations and governors of Wyoming and Montana to restart the program immediately.

Abandon withdrawals of lands from leasing in the Thompson Divide of the White River National Forest, Colorado; the 10-mile buffer around Chaco Cultural Historic National Park in New Mexico (restoring the compromise forged in the Arizona Wilderness Act39); and the Boundary Waters area in northern Minnesota if those withdrawals have not been completed.

Meanwhile, revisit associated leases and permits for energy and mineral production in these areas in consultation with state elected officials. Require regional offices to complete right-of-way and drilling permits within the average time it takes states in the region to complete them.

Conduct offshore oil and natural gas lease sales to the maximum extent permitted under the 2023–2028 lease program,34 with the possibility to move forward under a previously studied but unselected plan alternative.

Rulemaking.

The following policy reversals require rulemaking:

• Rescind the Biden rules and reinstate the Trump rules regarding:

1. BLM waste prevention
2. The Endangered Species Act rules defining Critical Habitat and Critical Habitat Exclusions
3. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act
4. CEQ reforms to NEPA

Reinstate President Trump’s plan for opening most of the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska to leasing and development.

Personnel Changes. The new Administration should be able to draw on the enormous expertise of state agency personnel throughout the country who are capable and knowledgeable about land management and prove it daily.

States are better resource managers than the federal government because they must live with the results. President Trump’s Schedule F proposal44 regarding accountability in hiring must be reinstituted to bring success to these reforms. Consistent with the theme of bringing successful state resource management examples to the forefront of federal policy, DOI should also look for opportunities to broaden state–federal and tribal–federal cooperative agreements.