Data Also Shows Thousands of Idle but Approved Federal Drilling Permits Although the oil and gas industry and their allies have criticized Obama Administration policies for allegedly restricting the industry’s access to federal lands for drilling, new information released by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in January, 2011 indicates that the oil and gas industry controls 41,186,158 acres of federal onshore lands, but has drilling operations on just 12,205,416 acres of these leases.

• Tags: drilling, Interior Secretary, Interior Secretary Salazar, land management, leases, leasing, oil and gas development, oil and gas leasing, secretarial order, wild lands, wildlands
• Related Campaigns: BLM Action Center

Proponents of oil development in Alaska have been making promises, and breaking them, for decades. More than thirty years of industrial activity in Alaska have demonstrated that oil production is inherently a dirty business. Despite the industry’s best intentions to minimize impacts, environmental and social effects are accumulating and resulting in lasting harm to ecosystems and indigenous cultures. This report calls attention to the many gaps between promise and reality, casting doubt on the reassurances being made by drilling proponents and their allies.

• Tags: alaska, America's Arctic, development, gas, leasing, oil
• Related Campaigns: Energy

The last seven years have seen an unprecedented rush to lease and approve permits to drill on federal public lands. Despite the massive numbers of acres already under lease and available for drilling and the huge surplus of acres leased and Applications for Permits to Drill approved, industry, the Bush Administration, and BLM continue to insist they need access to millions of additional acres and push for opening more sensitive lands to development, particularly in the Rockies.

• Tags: BLM, drilling, gas, leasing, offshore, oil, onshore
• Related Campaigns: Energy