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Friends of the Earth Slams Climate Omission in New Oil and Gas Leasing Rule

Friends of the Earth Slams Climate Omission in New Oil and Gas Leasing Rule

July 20, 2023

Biden Administration’s latest rulemaking continues to ignore glaring climate impacts of leasing program, backtracks on climate promises

WASHINGTON – Today, the Biden Administration’s Bureau of Land Management announced a new rulemaking to overhaul public lands leasing. The rule neglects to address the climate impacts of oil and gas drilling, despite a quarter of U.S. climate emissions coming from the federal leasing program. This is the latest in a long string of failures by the Administration to make good on President Biden’s promise to address the climate impacts of oil and gas drilling on public lands, which Friends of the Earth documented in a paper here.

Nicole Ghio, Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager at Friends of the Earth, issued the following statement:

Even as record heatwaves bake the country and floods ravage eastern states, the Biden Administration continues to cozy up to Big Oil. President Biden can’t be a climate leader unless he addresses the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. Turning a blind eye to his broken leasing program proves once again that Biden is content to fiddle away while the world burns.

After pledging to address the climate impacts of the leasing program during his campaign, President Biden issued a climate executive order in Jan. 2021, part of which directed the Department of Interior to conduct a “comprehensive” review of the leasing program. DOI released its long-delayed report in Nov. 2021, which was notably stripped of leasing’s climate impacts. Despite promising major climate action just days into taking office, Biden has failed to meaningfully reform his problematic leasing program.

Communications contact: Brittany Miller, [email protected], (202) 222-0746