Federal Leases for Oil Drilling Fall Dramatically Under Biden

The Biden administration has issued the lowest amount of federal leases to drill for oil and gas than any other administration since the end of World War Two, according to an article in the The Wall Street Journal, on Sept. 4.

The drop in permits to drill offshore or on federal lands has been noticeable, with leasing down 97 percent from the first 19 months of the Trump administration.

The federal leasing program was underutilized when energy companies were primarily focused on fracking on state and private lands during the shale boom, when energy was cheaper.

According to the WSJ, data from the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management demonstrated a slowdown in onshore and offshore leasing since Biden took office.

Out of the roughly 35 million acres currently leased from the federal government, about 60 percent were not actively producing oil or gas, according to the data.

The U.S Department of the Interior, despite claiming that it had issued a record-high numbers of leases under the Biden administration, had only leased 126,228 acres for drilling through Aug. 20, according to the WSJ.

Federal leases account for more than a quarter of all domestic oil production.

The article noted that the last president to lease out fewer than 4.4 million acres in the first half of his term was former President Richard Nixon.

Only former President Harry Truman leased fewer acres than the current administration, at 65,658 acres, from 1945 to 1946

Leasing Federal Lands

However, offshore drilling was in its infancy and the federal government was not yet involved in leasing water rights, which now make up the bulk of oil and gas leases, according to the WSJ.

President Biden, in a January 2021 executive order, suspended all new leasing of federal lands for drilling, “pending completion of a study and

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