“The Trump administration’s actions indicate it views the West as a playground for the oil and gas industry.”
New data shows the Trump administration has opened up significantly more land to the oil and gas industry than the Obama administration did in its final year, with much of it leased at a very low price. This shift comes despite little apparent change in industry demand since President Donald Trump took office.
In 2018, the federal government made 2.1 million acres of land available for oil and gas leases in the western United States, according to data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) analyzed by the Center for American Progress (CAP). In 2017, the government offered up 1.6 million acres in these western states, which include Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.
By comparison, the government made 472,000 acres available for oil and gas exploration during Obama’s final year in office — just a quarter of the acreage that Trump opened up last year.
View the complete April 12 article by Kyla Mandel on the ThinkProgress website here.