Interior, Planning to Expand Drilling Despite Shutdown, Urged to Halt Oil and Gas Leases

Nearly three dozen conservation and environmental groups on Thursday called on the Interior Department stop processing permits for oil and gas drilling during the shutdown and to delay planned lease sales of federal lands for such fossil fuel development.

The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees energy development on federal lands, last week began recalling workers to resume processing applications for oil and gas drilling permits, even as national parks remained closed, most federal food inspections were still halted and some 800,000 federal employees went without paychecks.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages offshore energy development in federal waters, ordered employees back to work to prepare for an upcoming lease sale of parcels for oil and gas drilling.

The moves by the two bureaus, which are part of the Interior Department, stoked outrage from conservation and environmental groups, as well as some staffers within the bureau.

In a letter Thursday, groups from the American Bird Conservancy to the Natural Resources Defense Council to the Sierra Club urged acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to halt such activities being conducted for the oil and gas industries even as the shutdown continues.

"We request that you promptly postpone any and all oil and gas lease sales until such time as BLM is able to conduct legally-compliant environmental reviews and comment and protest periods," the groups said. "For the same reasons, we further ask that DOI immediately cease work on any and all oil and gas permitting and planning activities."

In a second letter, three groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project – accused the Interior Department of violating federal public participation requirements.

"It's absolutely outrageous, not to mention illegal, that Trump is rolling out the red carpet for the oil and gas industry while the American people can't even reach an agency staffer by phone," Rebecca Fischer, climate and energy program attorney with WildEarth Guardians, said in a statement. "We've been completely shut out of decisions affecting our public lands, and we won't stand for it."

Lease-sales of federal lands and similar activities require public notice and comment periods. No such notices or comment periods occurred for a pair of lease sales in Colorado and New Mexico that had been scheduled for Dec. 31 and Jan. 7, the groups contend. Meanwhile, the Interior Department has been mum about three more lease sales scheduled in the next three weeks in New Mexico, Utah and Montana.

"To date, neither DOI nor the BLM have provided any information regarding the status of upcoming lease sales and associated comment and protest periods," the letter said. "Providing meaningful public participation in the oil and gas leasing process is a binding legal requirement."

The Bureau of Land Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management referred questions to the Interior Department, which also did not immediately return a request for comment.

The letters came one day after Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, also sent a letter to the Interior Department's acting secretary, urging him to reverse the planned lease sales.

"The administration has bent over backwards to ensure that the pain of the shutdown falls on only ordinary Americans and the environment, and not on the oil and gas industry," Grijalva wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., and Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif.