The fact is the U.S. simply can’t drill its way to lower prices at the pump. Other options, from greater energy efficiencies to the development of alternative fuels, are essential to reducing dependency on petroleum fuels and lowering fuel costs.
Since the 1990s, drilling on federal lands has steadily increased as a result of federal government policies that encourage development. The number of drilling permits has exploded in recent years, rising from 3,802 five years ago to 7,561 in 2007. Between 1999-2007, the number of drilling permits issued in public lands increased by over 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically, contradicting the argument that more drilling means lower gasoline prices. There is simply no correlation between the two.
Even if increased domestic drilling could reduce gas prices, there’s no justification to open additional federal lands because oil and gas companies can’t keep pace with the number of drilling permits the federal government is handing out.
Over the past four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 permits to drill on public land – 18,954 wells were actually drilled. That means companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits. The Feds have made 47.5 million acres of on-shore federal lands available to developers – about 13 million acres are in production. Similar trends are evident offshore where only 10.5 million of the 44 million available acres are currently producing oil or gas.
Combined, oil and gas companies hold leases to nearly 68 million acres of federal land and waters that they are not producing oil and gas. Oil and gas companies would not buy leases if they didn’t believe oil and gas could be produced there, yet they are not producing oil or gas from these areas already under their control.
Current inactive leases could produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day.
That would nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75%. It would also cut U.S. oil imports by more than a third, and be more than six times the estimated peak production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
Proponents of opening additional lands to oil and gas leasing assert that vast quantities of oil and gas are closed to energy development. In fact, according to the Minerals Management Service, of all the oil and gas believed to exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, 82% of the natural gas and 79% of the oil is located in areas that are currently open for leasing.
The Department of the Interior recently released a report that the Administration is using to delude Americans into believing that vast tracts of federal land with large concentrations of oil and gas are off-limits to oil and gas development.
In actuality, the report shows that only 38% of the oil and 16% of the natural gas are excluded from leasing largely because those resources are underneath National Parks and wilderness areas that have significant scenic, recreational, and wildlife values.
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Adapted from a Special Report by the Committee on Natural Resources Majority Staff
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