On February 9, 2020, Joe Biden declared to a New Hampshire crowd that when he became president, there would be “no more [oil and gas] drilling on federal lands, period.”

Now, two and a half years into Biden’s presidency, his administration has issued almost as many permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land as President Donald Trump had at this point in his presidency.

The Biden Administration approved 8,072 drilling permits on public lands from the month after the president’s inauguration through July 2023, compared to 8,293 under Trump for a comparable period, according to data from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

And that’s just the permits for drilling on federal land. The total amount of oil produced from drilling with these permits is higher so far under President Biden than President Trump. “Oil production is at an all-time high on federal public lands here in our country,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told a Senate committee hearing in May.

Despite climate-related wildfires, floods, and heat waves and pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the amount of oil extracted from federal lands has increased steadily, more than doubling from 177 million barrels in fiscal year 2017 (under Trump) to 445 million barrels in fiscal 2022 (under Biden), according to data from the U.S. Department of the Interior. The U.S. is both the biggest producer and consumer of oil and natural gas in the world, topping Saudi Arabia and Russia in production last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.‍

Taylor McKinnon, Southwest director for the Center for Biological Diversity said: “Two years of runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership by President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.  Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires phasing out fossil fuel extraction, but instead we’re still racing in the opposite direction.”

While the average number of drilling permits Biden’s administration has approved each month is slightly lower than the average number approved during the Trump Administration (272 versus 276 permits approved per month), the approval rate for applications submitted has remained above 80 percent since Biden took office. In contrast, the approval rate for permit applications submitted during fiscal year 2020, the last of Trump’s presidency, was 72 percent.

Biden’s February 2023 approval of the Willow Project, the largest oil and gas development on federal lands ever proposed, has eroded faith in his climate promises even further among some environmentalists. Arleigh Hitchcock, an organizer for the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, said after the Willow approval, “I have little faith in him holding to his emissions pledges.”

While the Biden Administration has shown no qualms about continuing to issue drilling permits, it has initiated a review of the federal oil and gas program. Permit issuance is only a small part of the process to drill a well on federal lands. First, companies must bid on parcels of land during lease sales held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM generally holds these sales every quarter. Once companies have secured a lease to a specific land parcel, they pay a rental fee to retain rights to develop that land: at least $3 per acre for the first two years, $5 per acre for years three through eight, and $15 per acre for each year after. The company may never choose to drill a well there, but it retains the right to develop the land for as long as it holds the lease.

In 2021, President Biden paused all lease sales pending a review of the leasing program by the Department of Interior (DOI). The American Petroleum Institute decried the pause, saying it would lead to increased reliance on foreign oil, lost jobs, and lost tax revenue, and described Biden’s actions as part of a campaign to “discourage the growth of oil and gas production.”

Meanwhile, oil and gas companies sat on more than 12 million acres of undeveloped federal mineral leases. The same year, the Biden administration approved 3,886 drilling permits, or 97 percent of the drilling permit applications submitted. The DOI released its report on the leasing program in November 2021 and in June 2022, lease sales resumed following a series of legal challenges.

DOI’s November 2021 report found that the leasing program “fails to provide a fair return to taxpayers, even before factoring in the resulting climate-related costs that must be borne by taxpayers; inadequately accounts for environmental harms to lands, waters, and other resources; fosters speculation by oil and gas companies to the detriment of competition and American consumers; extends leasing into low potential lands that may have competing higher value uses; and leaves communities out of important conversations about how they want their public lands and waters managed.” This assessment of the program spurred updates codified in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) but no requirement to consider the climate impacts of proposed leases and drilling permits.

‍The IRA raised minimum rental rates from $2 to $3 per acre, increased the royalty rate to 16.67 percent, and outlawed non-competitive leasing, which allowed oil and gas companies to purchase leases on land that did not receive any competitive bids at the main lease sale for extremely low rates. The previous royalty rate of 12.5 percent had not been updated in 100 years and was significantly lower than royalty rates for oil and gas production on state and private land. At times, the Texas royalty rate was double the federal rate.

Holly Hopkins, vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, claimed that the increases in rental and royalty rates are “an attempt to add even more barriers to future energy production” and raised concerns that the updates would discourage investment.

This does not seem to be the case in Wyoming at least, where the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) owns half of the surface land and nearly 70 percent of the mineral estate. The Wyoming BLM, who manages federal lease sales, received bids on all 67 parcels offered at the June 2023 lease sale. At the March 2020 sale, before royalty and minimum rental rates were increased, 106 parcels were offered for sale. Only 74 of those received competitive bids, slightly under 70 percent. While data comparing lease sale rates and revenues before and after the increase in rates are currently limited, it is far more likely that global economic conditions determine companies’ bullishness on new oil and gas development than changes in rental and royalty rates.

A new rule proposed in July would further update the federal leasing program by increasing minimum lease bonding amounts from $10,000 to $150,000. Bonding is intended to ensure oil and gas companies adequately plug and clean up wells once they are no longer productive, but the current minimum bond of $10,000 was set in 1960 and is no longer an adequate incentive, nor does it cover the cost of clean-up if the wells are abandoned.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, described the proposed rule as “an important step towards the BLM taking a more holistic conservation, climate, and community-centric approach to managing public lands.”  

As these proposed reforms make their way through the lengthy federal rulemaking process, President Biden continues holding lease sales and issuing new permits to drill. A lease sale was held in June 2023 and two more are planned this year, one in September and one in December. Biden’s administration issued 219 drilling permits in July, and on September 27, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will offer leases to develop 67 million acres across the Gulf of Mexico. A recent study found that even if all new fossil fuel production projects were to stop immediately, the world would still be on track to overshoot the goal to stay under 1.5 degrees Celsius, an increase in global average temperatures since pre-industrial levels that scientists have set as a critical target. .  

Environmental groups argue that continuing to issue drilling permits and to sell leases directly violates President Biden’s re-signing of the Paris Agreement and undermines his public commitment to action on climate change.  

Josh Axelrod, senior policy advisor with the Natural Resources Defense Council, praised the Biden administration’s recent proposed updates to the leasing program, but highlighted that, once again, no requirement to consider climate impacts of leasing is included. “What is truly key moving forward,” he said, “is for the agency [the Department of the Interior] to forge an approach for measuring and mitigating the program’s impact on climate.”

Lead photo: Stacks of drill pipe lie in the foreground with a drilling rig in the background in the Jonah Gas Field, located on federal land in Wyoming. Photo by Alex Milan Tracy, Sipa via AP Images.