3/4 of oil-lease land isn't producing

WASHINGTON — Nearly three-fourths of the 40 million acres of public land currently leased for oil and gas development in the lower 48 states isn't producing any oil or gas, federal records show, even as the Bush administration pushes to open more environmentally sensitive public lands for oil and gas development.

An Associated Press computer analysis of Bureau of Land Management records found that 80 percent of federal lands leased for oil and gas production in Wyoming are producing no oil or gas. Neither are 83 percent of the leased acres in Montana, 77 percent in Utah, 71 percent in Colorado, 36 percent in New Mexico and 99 percent in Nevada.

How much exploration has occurred on the nearly 30 million acres of nonproducing public land leases is difficult to say. BLM officials could provide no details on the number of exploratory wells drilled on those leases, despite repeated requests for that information over the past two months.

But with so much public land already available for exploration, environmental groups and local landowners are questioning why the Bush administration is pushing to lease still more federal land to the oil and gas industry, particularly in areas that the groups and some lawmakers want protected as federal wilderness areas.

"The aggressive leasing of public land pushed by the Bush administration is a land grab, pure and simple, giving industry more and more control over public land while costing taxpayers millions of dollars," said Peter Morton, a resource economist with the Wilderness Society.

Morton said the leases, which companies can lock up for 10 years with annual rents of only $2 to $3 an acre, are an economic boon to some companies because they count as assets that can make debt refinancing easier while also attracting potential investors.

The Energy Task Force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney asked the BLM three years ago to find ways to open new federal lands to oil and gas leasing and to speed up the approval of drilling permits. To meet increased demand for natural gas, the task force said drilling on federal land will have to double by 2020.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton agreed in settling a lawsuit with the state of Utah last year to halt all reviews of public lands in the West for new wilderness protection and to withdraw that protected status from some 3 million acres in Utah.

That decision, which conservation groups have asked a federal appeals court to overturn, cleared the way for oil and gas leasing in millions more acres of potential wilderness in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.