​DENVER -- Today, Western Energy Alliance and the U.S. Oil and Gas Association (USOGA) call on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to rescind its proposed climate change disclosure rule in light of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. The proposed rule runs afoul of the major questions doctrine by assuming climate change regulatory and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting authority for SEC. If even EPA doesn’t have such authority in the absence of a congressional mandate, then certainly a financial regulator cannot act like an environmental regulatory agency by requiring GHG emissions reporting and reductions. 

​DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today responded to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) onshore oil and natural gas lease sale in Wyoming and legal maneuvers by Keep-It-in-the-Ground environmental groups led by WildEarth Guardians that want to stop all federal oil and natural gas leasing and development. The following statement is attributable to Alliance president Kathleen Sgamma.
 
“These groups are trying to conjure up a legal precedent to support their agenda of absolutely no oil and natural gas leasing and development anywhere. With obstructionist groups having challenged 3,500 recent drilling permits and 5,900 leases issued since 2015, there is a coordinated effort to drive an agenda through the courts of absolutely no federal production at all. Actual laws passed by Congress such as the Mineral Leasing Act, which requires regular lease sales, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which specifies that oil and natural gas is one of the primary uses of public lands, are the prevailing law of the land. It’s bad timing for them that we’re in a Supreme Court season right now in which the highest court is reining in judicial activism that conjured legal rights and policies out of thin air, not the constitution and actual laws.

​DENVER – Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma will testify at a hearing on inflation and high energy prices organized by Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ-05). The hearing will take place Tuesday, June 21st at 3:00 p.m. ET at the Heritage Foundation and is available online.
 
“Since day one, President Biden has pursued a climate change agenda meant to constrain American oil and natural gas production and consumption. Starting with the cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline followed a week later by the leasing ban, the president was intent on restricting American oil and natural gas. On federal lands and waters where the federal government has the most control, he has pledged eliminating it altogether,” said Sgamma. “The president could help ease inflation by backing off these policies and even encouraging American production. However, we have seen few meaningful signs, other than rhetorical, that a reversal is in the cards.

DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today submitted public comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the proposed climate change disclosure rule designed to deny oil and natural gas companies access to capital and credit. The trade group detailed the agency’s lack of statutory authority, expansion of mission from protecting investors to regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and intent to increase the cost of energy.

DENVER – Western Energy Alliance will appear in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming on Friday morning in its lawsuit challenging the Department of the Interior’s failure to hold quarterly onshore oil and natural gas lease sales. The suit, Western Energy Alliance v Biden, was filed in January 2021 after President Biden signed the Executive Order on Climate Change (#14008) that banned lease sales. While lease sales have been scheduled for June, there are no plans to resume regular quarterly sales afterwards, a clear violation of the Mineral Leasing Act.