Leasing

Former Defense Department Secretary William Cohen and 15 former military leaders are urging the Interior Department (DOI) to keep the Arctic Ocean in its proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil & Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022.

Private landowners in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest are growing increasingly restive with the federal government’s four-year effort to lease parts of the forest for shale drilling, with two mineral rights organizations recently criticizing ongoing delays and urging a variety of stakeholders to file public comments.

Private landowners in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest are growing increasingly restive with the federal government’s four-year effort to lease parts of the forest for shale drilling, with two mineral rights organizations recently criticizing ongoing delays and urging a variety of stakeholders to file public comments.

Streamlined rules that update federal oversight of oil, natural gas and sulfur leasing in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are to take effect at the end of May, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said.

A final oil/natural gas leasing plan released Thursday for the White River National Forest in Colorado effectively closes the possibility of any new drilling in the Thompson Divide area that has captured the industry’s eye for some time.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell last Friday called out a new Bureau of Land Management (BLM) master leasing plan (MLP) for federal lands in east-central Utah as a model for how communities can balance oil/natural gas development with protection of iconic landscapes such as the lands around Moab, UT. The plan begins a 90-day comment period Friday, but some industry sources are already calling the MLP redundant.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has repeatedly expressed frustration with the Obama administration’s treatment of her state’s energy resources, sparred briefly Tuesday with Department of Interior (DOI) Secretary Sally Jewel over that agency’s attitude toward the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

An attempt by the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) to lease parts of the Mississippi Sound for natural gas drilling stalled Thursday after a judge said the economic impact review was inadequate.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett issued an executive order Friday lifting a moratorium on new oil and gas leases in state parks and forests and replacing it with a measure that will allow such leases, provided the drilling occurs on nearby land and surfaces in the parks and forests are not disturbed.