Rockies exploration and production (E&P) companies intend to work more closely with BLM to remove uncertainty surrounding oil and gas leasing activity in many areas in the region, an official with the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance (WEA) told NGI Thursday.

Kathleen Sgamma, WEA government and public affairs director, contends that BLM is simply not leasing in certain large areas, such as the Big Horn Basin in Montana, while new resource management plans are still being developed. Those plans often take years to develop, Sgamma said, and in the meantime E&P companies are being deprived of new business opportunities and the states involved are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

“What BLM is supposed to do is manage the lands according to the resource plans that are currently active until such a time when the plan is updated,” Sgamma said. “Right now in several areas across the region they are undergoing plan updates while putting everything else on hold in those areas. They should not be putting vast areas on hold and stopping productive uses of public lands and job creation, energy development and other things because they are updating a plan.”

Sgamma said BLM expressly is not supposed to be holding up leasing under the Federal Land, Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). She said there are at least hundreds of thousands of acres “up to millions of acres” being held up. “This is not right for the American economy, and it is not the way [BLM ] is supposed to be managing the lands, according to their own statute, FLPMA,” Sgamma said.

She said the industry in the Rockies is still optimistic as outlined in WEA’s white paper, “Blueprint for Western Energy Prosperity.” “In that report, we have several policy recommendations, and one is for an entire overhaul of the onshore oil and gas program. We’re looking at a multi-year process of working with BLM to streamline processes from leasing to environmental analysis to permitting more efficient and increase certainty for companies.”

WEA is now putting together a plan for working with BLM over several years, Sgamma said.

Suing BLM to speed things up is not an option, she said. “It is fairly difficult to sue the government to get it to do something,” Sgamma said. “You can usually challenge the government once an agency has made a decision, but in this case, [BLM] is not making a decision. We represent companies that are trying to make money, create jobs and energy. They are not in the business of suing.”

WEA does not have a wealth of statistics on the number of oil and gas plays that are being held up or the money and jobs that have been lost. Sgamma acknowledged that some lack of gas drilling right now is due to supply and demand and price factors, but the producers still want the lease sale for future development.

WEA has no region-wide statistics, but Sgamma quoted recent numbers from Wyoming where delays due to environmental analyses prevented 30,600 jobs from being created on an annual basis for every year BLM delays those projects. This is based on a study of six projects in Wyoming that have been delayed for more than six years now, she said. “They estimated about 1,600 new wells that have not been drilled every year over this recent period, and $157 million in revenues does not go to the state.”

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