U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) denounced the Biden administration’s recent settlement agreement with several conservation groups to block drilling permits for federal land in North Dakota, Montana, and South Dakota.
“This is a bad deal for the American people and only further increases our nation’s reliance on OPEC and adversaries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela,” Sen. Hoeven said.
Filed on Sept. 6 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; U.S. Secretary of the Department of the Interior Debra Haaland; and Montana Bureau of Land Management Deputy State Director Kimberly Prill reached a settlement with the groups agreeing to block drilling permits across 113 leases issued between 2019 and 2020 for 58,617 acres of federal land across the three states.
“Instead of defending previously held lease sales, this settlement demonstrates the Biden administration’s continued refusal to allow oil and gas development on federal lands, a decision which undermines our energy security and has helped drive inflation to record highs,” said Sen. Hoeven on Wednesday.
The settlement agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in 2021 by the conservation groups, which claimed the Trump administration failed to address the impacts of oil and gas extraction in eastern Montana and western North Dakota to the climate and groundwater.
Under the new agreement, the Bureau of Land Management will block drilling and reassess and reconsider whether to uphold the sale of 58,000 acres of oil and gas leases auctioned between July 2019 and September 2020, according to the filing.
“Even when forced to hold lease sales by the courts,” Sen. Hoeven said, “the Biden administration severely curtails the acres available, increases royalty rates, which get passed on to consumers, and relies on litigation from their environmentalist allies to block the permits needed for energy development.”
According to his staff, Sen. Hoeven also continues to push back on the Biden administration’s burdensome regulations on energy development and is working to pass legislation like the Bureau of Land Management Mineral Spacing Act, S. 4227, which he sponsored in May to streamline the oil and gas permitting process and to recognize fee ownership for certain oil and gas drilling or spacing units.
The bill is under consideration in the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.