Leave Off the Leases

The Bureau of Land Management recently released its draft environmental assessment (EA) for its scheduled oil and gas lease sale in Montana, slated to occur sometime in February 2022. The BLM analyzed the impacts of leasing 14 parcels (6,277 acres) in eastern Montana to private oil and gas companies (with additional parcels in North Dakota).

The BLM proposes three alternatives with its EA:

• Alternative A: offer none of these parcels at the February 2022 lease sale
• Alternative B: offer all of the parcels across Montana and North Dakota for lease
• Alternative C: defer six of the largest parcels in eastern Montana, namely for their impacts on pronghorn habitat. This alternative would offer the remaining eight parcels in Montana, covering 2,834 acres, as well as all of the parcels in North Dakota.

Notably, for the first time ever, the BLM presented the anticipated downstream carbon emissions and climate impacts these leases would have if they were developed. The agency also released a comprehensive “Specialist’s Report on Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Trends.”

This report discloses the annual anticipated emissions from America’s public lands associated from fossil fuel development over the next 12 months, as well as the longer-term climate impacts from current and projected development. BLM makes it clear that under the status quo – including this sale – the world will not achieve net carbon zero emissions by 2050, which is needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

Certainly not lost on us is the irony of the BLM releasing this environmental assessment just a few days before world leaders convened in Scotland for COP26 to, above all else, reduce carbon emissions worldwide.

To that end, the federal oil and gas leasing program needs to be reformed from top to bottom before any new leases should be offered. That’s why we’re advocating for Alternative A, which is the best way to protect our public lands and climate while the federal government works to fix this broken system.

However, should the BLM choose to move ahead with the sale, it is imperative that it do so under Alternative C with some additional conditions to safeguard our public resources. Those conditions should include:

• An increase of the royalty rate to 18.75% for any production, as well as full-cost bonding for any drilling.
• The requirement that private companies pay their fair share of the social cost of carbon attributable to this sale (as identified in the BLM’s analysis), so taxpayers aren’t left holding the bag.
• Stronger protections for wildlife habitat and migratory corridors on all parcels.
• The BLM retaining the right to impose additional conditions on the leases as the Department of the Interior overhauls the oil and gas leasing program.

You can learn more about the specific parcels here as well.

If you’re not quite ready to submit a comment to the BLM and would like to learn more about how to do it effectively, join us from noon to 1 p.m. (MST) on Nov. 15 for a discussion with Alison Gallensky. Allison is principal conservation geographer at Rocky Mountain Wild and has years of experience tracking lease sales, mapping the conservation conflicts with proposed parcels, and helping people across the Rocky Mountain West write public comments that make a difference. She and Wild Montana staff will explain the leasing process and answer your questions. You can reference our public comment writing guide here.

Register for the webinar

If you are ready to submit a comment, you can do so here now.

I know this is a wonky and complicated process, but the time you spend learning about these leases and writing comments can make a huge difference for our public lands. We can’t thank you enough.