Report: Big Oil’s Public Leasing Shell Game

WASHINGTON – Friends of the Earth released a policy paper today outlining how President Biden and Congress can counteract the oil and gas sector’s disingenuous efforts to open up more public lands and waters to drilling. This comes as the industry and its lobby groups continue to usar the Russian invasion of Ukraine to push for more public land and waters leasing, which would have zero impact on the current global energy crisis and high gas prices.

“El juego de trileros de las grandes petroleras: Un castillo de naipes altamente subvencionado.” overviews how the industry already holds 23.2 million acres of unused, idle public leases – enough to last decades without new leasing. If developed, this stockpile of leased public resources would lock in at least a half century of climate change-inducing emisiones, pushing the world beyond the climate tipping point. 

Not only does the industry want cheap access to public lands and waters, leaving taxpayers to clean up its mess, but the sector is also stockpiling leases in order to artificially inflate its bottom line and appear more desirable to banks, shareholders, and investors. This allows oil and gas companies to reap miles de millones in profits with little to no interest in increasing production.

“Big Oil and Gas have exploited America’s broken public resource leasing program for far too long, costing taxpayers millions and pushing the planet towards a climate catastrophe,” said Nicole Ghio, Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager at Friends of the Earth. “The Biden administration and Congress should end Big Oil’s highly-subsidized shell game by ending new oil and gas leasing to avert the worst climate change forecasts.” 

Contacto de comunicaciones: Brittany Miller, (202) 222-0746, [email protected]