Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Guest column:

Taxpayers hurt by BLM’s land lease strategy

Here in Nevada, our public lands are sources of pride, joy and opportunity. My family has spent countless hours hiking, camping and exploring Nevada’s beautiful backcountry, creating lasting memories. Our broad basins and snowy ranges are also home to important wildlife habitat for species such as sage grouse, elk, desert tortoise and rare native fish, as well as cultural sites cherished by indigenous tribes. Our public lands are powerful economic engines too. Nevada’s outdoor recreation generates $12.6 billion and provides 87,000 jobs to boost Nevada’s local economies.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration clearly doesn’t see the same value in these special places. Instead, it has endangered our public lands and our economy with disastrous leasing policies that encourage wasteful speculation and fast-track access for oil and gas companies to areas that have little actual drilling potential. This is a deeply misguided practice that has threatened millions of acres in the state and will do even more damage without action. Luckily, help has arrived.

Sen Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., recently offered a solution in the form of the End Speculative Oil and Gas Leasing Act of 2020, introduced Jan. 16. The bill aims to require that lands actually possess oil and gas resources before they are leased to industry. It’s a common-sense step that promotes the management of public land for multiple uses — not just oil and gas drilling — and frees up federal land management staff to focus on other integral parts of their mission, like enhancing wildlife habitat and supporting opportunities for outdoor recreation.

The problems with our current leasing system, which Cortez Masto’s bill will help to fix, are not limited to Nevada. Across the West, a decades-old system gives oil and gas companies the right of first refusal on public land, which has led to widespread speculative leasing. Companies scoop up these lands while everyone else pays the cost. To no surprise, much of this land sits idle while the real costs mount in the form of wasted government resources and lost revenue.

The time to address speculative oil and gas leasing is now. Just last year, the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) peddled Nevada public lands to oil and gas companies at five lease sales — in a state where there is only one active drill rig. All told, in 2019, the Trump administration offered up more than a million acres of public lands with low or no drilling potential to the oil and gas industry. When public land is leased to oil and gas speculators, taxpayers suffer, because the leases limit the ability of land managers to enhance other revenue-generating activities, such as hunting, fishing, tourism, outdoor recreation or clean energy development. That’s bad enough, but to make matters worse, Trump’s BLM just revealed plans to hold new Nevada lease sales throughout this year.

Trump’s deeply flawed “energy dominance” agenda means he wants to let oil and gas drilling be the dominant use of our public lands, even when it makes no economic sense to do so. Energy dominance may be a catchy slogan, but it’s a devastating and misguided policy that lets the fossil fuel industry hoard land at the expense of taxpayers, the lands they love, and other activities that generate more money and value to all Americans.

Nevadans deserve better, and under Cortez Masto’s bill, we would get it. That’s why I urge leaders in Washington to support the End Speculative Oil and Gas Leasing Act of 2020 — to stop the waste of taxpayer dollars and ensure that our public lands are managed for everyone, not just special interests.

Brian Beffort is director of the Toiyabe chapter of the Sierra Club. He lives in Reno and is a Nevada native.