Cost of the Biden Ban on Public Lands
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One week after taking office, President Biden signed the “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” to ban new oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands and waters. It is in the form of a programmatic environmental impact statement (EIS) to analyze wide-ranging impacts of federal leasing and development on climate change. Such analyses take years to complete, thereby morphing what’s being characterized by the administration as a temporary “pause” into a long-term ban. Although the order does not ban permitting on existing leases, it will affect existing projects that are awaiting adjacent leases and tribal, state, and private horizontal wells that cannot avoid federal lands and minerals that lie along their laterals.
Western Energy Alliance immediately filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming. The complaint challenges Biden’s order as exceeding presidential authority and violating the Mineral Leasing Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act. A recent Wyoming Energy Authority study analyzed the economic impact of a leasing and/or drilling ban in the states of Alaska, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, which together represent over 97% of federal onshore production. The study was conducted by Dr. Tim Considine, Professor of Energy Economics at the University of Wyoming. Although the study provides numbers for both leasing and drilling ban scenarios, the following summarizes the leasing ban data which directly relate to President Biden’s executive order. By the end of Biden’s first term, the costs of banning leasing will be $33.5 billion in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and $8.3 billion in state tax revenues. Nearly 58,700 jobs will be lost annually and workers would lose over $15 billion in wages. |
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If extended to 2040, the Biden Ban would eliminate $640 billion in GDP and $152 billion in state tax revenues. Over 343,000 jobs annually would be lost along with $286 billion in wages.
The halt to leasing would not only limit production on public lands, as the study shows. Because of the checkerboard of federal, state, Indian, and private lands and minerals across the West, adjacent lands can become isolated and nonfederal oil and natural gas resources stranded when federal access is denied. The total economic numbers include these “spillover” effects of federal bans curtailing nonfederal production.
In addition to imposing significant personal and economic costs on westerners, a ban on public lands is bad policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A ban will not eliminate market demand for oil and natural gas but merely shift lost federal production to other parts of the country without public lands or to foreign competitors that are not held to strict environmental standards. The study estimates the cost per ton of avoided emissions ranges from $64 to $196, four to thirteen times more, respectively, than the current market price of $15 per ton set by California’s cap-and-trade program. In other words, a Biden Ban is even less efficient and more costly than California’s self-destructive climate programs that have caused rolling brown-outs and an exodus of manufacturing and other businesses from the state.
Below are the economic numbers for each state.
The halt to leasing would not only limit production on public lands, as the study shows. Because of the checkerboard of federal, state, Indian, and private lands and minerals across the West, adjacent lands can become isolated and nonfederal oil and natural gas resources stranded when federal access is denied. The total economic numbers include these “spillover” effects of federal bans curtailing nonfederal production.
In addition to imposing significant personal and economic costs on westerners, a ban on public lands is bad policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A ban will not eliminate market demand for oil and natural gas but merely shift lost federal production to other parts of the country without public lands or to foreign competitors that are not held to strict environmental standards. The study estimates the cost per ton of avoided emissions ranges from $64 to $196, four to thirteen times more, respectively, than the current market price of $15 per ton set by California’s cap-and-trade program. In other words, a Biden Ban is even less efficient and more costly than California’s self-destructive climate programs that have caused rolling brown-outs and an exodus of manufacturing and other businesses from the state.
Below are the economic numbers for each state.
For a downloadable summary of this report, click here.
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Voices across the West are speaking out against the Biden Ban. The chorus of voices is growing and includes local officials, tribal members, and educators on both sides of the aisle who’ve publicly opposed the president’s executive action. We’ve compiled a list of local officials who’ve been in the media and acted against the leasing ban.
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