DENVER – A coalition of oil and natural gas trade associations today lauded the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for organizing Energy Week and focusing on passing a slate of bills to enhance domestic oil and natural gas production. The groups combined represent companies that produce an estimated 80 percent of oil and natural gas in the U.S. The associations include Western Energy Alliance, Energy Workforce and Technology Council, Independent Petroleum Association of America, International Association of Drilling Contractors, National Ocean Industries Association, Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, and U.S. Oil and Gas Association.
DENVER – Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma will testify at a legislative hearing before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands regarding four bills, including two on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Resource Management Plans (RMP) that would close 6.7 million acres to leasing across four western states. She will testify in support of bills introduced by Rep. Harriet Hageman (H.R. 6085) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (H.R. 6547) to stop two RMPs in Wyoming and Colorado as well as bills on the Antiquities Act (H.R. 5499) and Natural Asset Companies (H.R. 7006).
“Just one week into his presidency, President Biden issued a moratorium on new leases on federal lands and waters. Lacking the power to do so, this Biden leasing ban was fairly easily overturned in court. BLM is now using the public land use planning process to preclude leasing on vast swathes of land across the West, in effect serving as the Biden leasing ban by other means,” said Sgamma. “In five RMPs that are currently being updated across the West, BLM is proposing to close over 6.7 million acres to oil and natural gas leasing. The extent of the proposed land closures and restrictions is at an unprecedented level, with the ultimate effect being a ban on leasing on large parts of the federal mineral estate.” DENVER – Western Energy Alliance applauded member company Liberty Energy and co-plaintiff Nomad Proppant Services LLC for winning a preliminary injunction from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halting the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) climate change disclosure rule. The following statement is attributable to Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma:
“Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, has once again shown that he is a true leader in the oil and natural gas industry. While many companies lay low and even are co-opted to advance policies that aren’t in their interests, Chris was willing to immediately stand up and say this rule is wrong and was rewarded for his action. Liberty’s ‘Bettering Human Lives’ initiative shows how the company is among the most credible in arguing against the SEC’s overreaching rule. DENVER – Western Energy Alliance responded today to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) new Draft Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement for Greater Sage-Grouse Rangewide Planning. The Biden Administration continues the back-and-forth attempts to manage the species, from the flawed plans issued by the Obama/Biden Administration in 2015, which the Alliance challenged in court, and the revised Trump Administration plans in 2019.
“Conservation of the sage grouse is a goal shared by the oil and natural gas industry, ranchers, states, and communities across the West. That goal is best achieved at the state level, not with a one-size-fits-all federal approach,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance. “This plan amendment is a beast, updating 77 land use plans across 10 states, which concerns me since it’s one approach versus the state-by-state approach of the Obama and Trump plans. As we read it, we’ll be looking to see how BLM accounts for the huge variation across states, as the sagebrush shrubland of Wyoming is different from the sagebrush steppe of Utah, among many other variations. Each state has different topographies, predation concerns, quality of habitat, etc. and a one-size-fits-all federal approach is not effective. We’ll be looking to see how well BLM has incorporated state plans and all the private, state, and federal conservation that has been ongoing for decades. It’s positive that the preferred alternative seems to be a blend between the other approaches and prior plans, which indicates that BLM is trying to find a workable balance. DENVER – Western Energy Alliance’s president, Kathleen Sgamma, will testify at a hearing entitled “Monetizing Nature and Locking up Public Land: The Implications of Biden’s Strategy for Natural Capital Accounting” before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Sgamma’s testimony focuses on the detriments of federal agencies implementing the president’s natural capital accounting strategy to assess ecological services values and the growing number of federal bureaucratic initiatives that crowd out basic government services. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 7th, at 10:15 a.m. ET, and will be available on the committee’s website.
“The initiative on natural capital accounting is but another example of bureaucratic encrustation. Twenty-seven federal agencies are now busily figuring out how to account for the natural resource and ecosystem services values they control or advise on. Like other initiatives that have no basis in U.S. law, the Biden Administration looks outside the country for justification. The environmental-economic statistics are to be based on the United Nations’ System of Environmental-Economic Accounting,” said Sgamma. “As the federal government struggles to provide services at a reasonable cost to taxpayers and our national debt has swelled to nearly $35 trillion because the government cannot keep to its means, it is now to apply a whole new accounting framework for often subjective ecosystem services valuations. |
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