In a rare Sunday session the Senate voted to advance a $10-12 billion omnibus lands package that would close access to millions of acres of public lands for energy exploration and other activities.

Senators voted 66-12 to invoke cloture and move the bill (S. 22) forward, garnering seven more votes than the 59 that were required. There will be another procedural vote on the bill Wednesday, with final passage expected to come Thursday, said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), who cosponsored the broad lands bill with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The measure would then be sent to the House.

At best Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a staunch critic of the bill, could drag out the process by demanding 30 hours of post-cloture debate, Wicker said. Coburn took to the Senate floor Monday to decry the measure. The package of more than 160 lands bill was introduced in the last Congress, but Coburn prevented the measure from being brought up for a vote during the lame-duck session (see Daily GPI, Nov. 18, 2008).

“The combination of these 160 bills reflects possibly the most significant conservation legislation passed by the Senate in the past decade,” Bingaman said on the Senate floor Sunday. “Some have questioned the wisdom of protecting federal lands at a time when the nation is seeking to expand domestic conventional and alternative energy production…[But] according to the Bureau of Land Management, almost none of the wilderness areas that would be created by this bill are believed to contain significant energy development potential.”

Opponents, such as Coburn, disagree. “One provision in this bill, which the majority leader won’t subject to amendment, would permanently ban access to an enormous natural gas field in Wyoming that would match the annual production of our two largest natural gas-producing states, Alaska and Texas,” he said. Coburn was referring to the Wyoming Range, which has been steeped in controversy about whether producers should be allowed to drill for gas in the Bridger-Teton National Forest (see Daily GPI, April 24, 2008; Feb. 19, 2008).

“In this bill we are putting a patch over our eye and limiting our ability in the future to increase our energy independence by taking millions of acres of land and forever closing them to any source of energy, no matter what any new technology might be, no matter if we could do it totally without any environmental impact,” Coburn said.

He is upset not only with the content of the lands package — closing off federal lands to energy production and earmarks — but also with Reid’s decision to block debate and obstruct all amendments to the 1,300-page lands bill (see Daily GPI, Jan. 12). “I’m disappointed the Senate majority leader has refused to allow senators the opportunity to improve, amend or eliminate any of the questionable provisions in his omnibus lands bill.”

Bingaman said the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act would result in the addition of more than two million new acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System. It would establish three new units of the National Park System and enlarge more than a dozen existing areas, create a new National Monument and three new National Conservation Areas, and codify the Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America historic preservation programs.

In addition, it will designate more than 1,000 miles of new additions to the National Wild and Scenic River system, would help protect 1.2 million acres of the Wyoming Range, and would add four new trails to the National Trails System for a combined addition of more than 2,800 miles of new trails.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on the Senate to vote against the measure, saying it “substantially hampers energy development and private property rights by withdrawing millions of acres of land from oil and gas exploration…It withdraws 1.2 million acres of land in Wyoming from mineral leasing and energy exploration, which includes approximately 300 million bbl of recoverable oil and 8.8 Tcf of natural gas. In addition, another 2.1 million U.S. acres would be designated as ‘wilderness areas,’ thereby preventing all major recreation on them and prohibiting any new oil and gas leasing.

“Shackling U.S,. energy exploration and development at this critical time would substantially jeopardize America’s already fragile economy.”

Myron Ebell, director of energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, echoed that sentiment. The measure “is full of bad provisions, but the worst are the ones that would prohibit oil and natural gas production on more than a million acres of federal land…Tens of millions of acres of federal lands in the West have already been withdrawn from mineral and energy production. The new Congress should be opening some of these areas…Instead, faced with declining natural gas production and potential shortages in the near term, the first bill that Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the Senate to consider would take 1.2 million acres in Wyoming with high natural gas potential out of production,” Ebell said.

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