In Bid to Stop Hemorrhaging Support, Biden Restarts Federal Oil Lease Sales … With A Catch
The plan isn’t without a few, pesky strings attached. Higher fees, for example.
Polls continue to show that Biden is keeping at least one campaign promise. He is unifying the nation….against him, as is shown by the most recent polls showing hemorrhaging support for the occupant of the White House.
Just a third of all Americans (33%) approve of how President Biden is handling his job responsibilities, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, the commander-in-chief’s worst performance yet in the benchmark survey.
On the flip side, 54% percent of respondents disapproved of Biden’s performance, with 43% saying that they “strongly” disapproved. By contrast, just 18% said they strongly approved of the 46th president.
Thirteen percent said they didn’t know or declined to answer the question, the highest percentage in the survey since January.
Biden’s approval rating among registered voters is little better, sitting at 35% — another low for the survey and down 17 percentage points from his high approval rating in February 2021.
The rising cost of energy, which is feeding historic inflation and hurting the American middle class, is a significant, contributing factor to the tanking approval. As a result, Biden is ditching another of campaign promise by resuming oil and gas leases on federal lands.
The Biden administration quietly announced Friday that it was restarting the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land next week — almost exactly 15 months after President Biden imposed a moratorium on such sales upon taking office.
The announcement of the pending sales by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) represents an about-face by the White House, which had resisted pressure from energy companies to open up more land for drilling, instead insisting that thousands of previously approved leases were going unused.
The renewed lease sales are the latest move by the Biden administration to shore up the country’s energy supply as the average price of a gallon of gas remains stubbornly above $4.
However, the plan isn’t without a few, pesky strings attached. Higher fees, for example.
In opening up the new public lands for oil and gas permitting, the Interior Department will raise the royalty rates that companies must pay to the federal government to 18.75 percent of their revenues from 12.5 percent, an increase that could bring in billions of dollars for the federal government. Even at current levels, the royalties are a major source of revenue. Last year, the federal government collected $5.5 billion from drilling on public lands.
The amount of land that is potentially can be leased has been significantly curbed.
The bureau will offer around 173 parcels on roughly 144,000 acres of federal land, which Interior said is an 80% reduction from the acreage originally being considered for leasing. Interior said it reduced the amount of land being offered after “robust environmental review” and engagement with Native tribes and local communities.
And, despite the land limits and increase royalties, green justice groups are complaining bitterly about the move.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, slammed the Biden administration’s decision.
“The Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director for the group. “It’s as if they’re ignoring the horror of firestorms, floods and megadroughts, and accepting climate catastrophes as business as usual.”
Biden’s problem is that he has no base of support. The is no hard limit to how far down in the polls he can go. It will interesting to see how much father the numbers can plunge. Under 30% may be coming up soon.
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A move calculated to satisfy no one. Brilliant.
“However, the plan isn’t without a few, pesky strings attached. Higher fees, for example.”
Perfectly predictable, when you’re dealing with The Big Guy.
Plus, he will often expect a favor from you in return.
Maybe a liver pate wedding cake for Major.
Or to make Hunter’s teeth look good for his funeral.
How dare he accede do the peoples’ demands?
Trot out ‘Real Bitch’ Psaki, immediately!
Absolutely! It’s far too little to do anything to increase oil supplies or lower prices; and yet it’s enough to enrage all of the Enviro True Believers. Once again, the Biden regime manages to find the *worst* possible response to a catastrophe they themselves created.
What company would pay for a lease,
knowing that they will probably never get a DRILLING PERMIT ????
None of them. Certainly not with the insane royalty increase.
The entire point of this is not to actually increase production, but just to allow the administration to bullshit about how they WANT to increase production but those evil oil companies just don’t want to drill!
Nobody’s going to buy it.
That said, the oil companies should just say “Nah, we’re good,” and let the Biden regime and the Democrat socialists get swallowed up by the black hole of their own making. It will hurt the government more than the petroleum companies inasmuch as the gov’t makes far more on a gallon of fuel than the companies.
The hopefully temporary high price of fuel may be a small price to pay for eradicating the Marxist vermin from control of the government.
Wow, create problems that don’t exist and swoop in with a miraculous solution.
That is why Cliff is hated as a Maintenance Section Leader at BMW Plant 10.
Genius move. Increasing royalties is just a cost that will reduce the amounts bid and the number of leases bid on. Of course, the legal and regulatory delays will also do the same. Even AOC, with her degree in economics, could have told them that.
It will take more that this to get companies to commit the amount of capital it takes to get things going again when they are relying on a crooked government to not flip-flop again after the elections. The oil production business is a long-term commitment where return of capital invested takes several years. Government simply must get out of the way and offer solid guarantees. You can’t do business with fascists and communists.
Liberals are nothing if pathetically predictable.
They dramatically reduced the land they’re leasing (so almost certainly removing the actual profitable ones) and THEN increased the cost by 50%.
No oil company is going to get any kind of actual profit from these insane leases, so they probably aren’t even going to take these leases in the first place.
Then the administration can bullshit about ‘we OFFERED them leases but the evil oil companies just don’t want to drill because that would reduce their EVIL PROFITEERING!!!!!
It’s so pathetically obvious and predictable.
Bingo! You had me at “pathetic!”
“Just a third of all Americans (33%) approve of how President Biden is handling his job responsibilities”
What percentage of Americans realize that Biden isn’t making any decisions? That Biden isn’t in control of anything and, besides taking a nap and eating his pudding, spends most of his time practicing how to read from the telepromter at his next ten minute news conference?
It is well past time for POS Biden to go!
“The bureau will offer around 173 parcels…”
How much would you be willing to bet these are the worst potential gas/oil sites they could find, so when the lease sales all fall through, they can shrug and proclaim “We tried, but nobody is buying.”
Also, raising royalties to 18.75 percent of their revenues from 12.5 percent. Is that overall for all leases being used, or only for the new ones? Because I find it questionable that the government could ex post facto just doodle with established and pumping royalty rates at their whim. Or maybe they can. After all, I’m not a biologist.
Oil producers will jump all over this, knowing Biden will pull the rug from any investments as soon as he can.
Dang shame the Mafia isn’t running this stuff. They know they can’t skim too much: eventually it cuts down the revenue stream, brings attention, and it’s all round bad for business.
Wait a minute. Biden is making a move concerning leases for gas and oil exploration/production? Wasn’t it just three weeks ago that we were told that there were plenty of leases, and the administration’s leasing program wasn’t part of the problem of higher gas prices/more reliance of foreign oil, that there was nothing to fix with respect to the program?
We have reached the seventh ring of Biden’s lies. Lies upon lies and lies about lying. It would be laughable if it weren’t destroying the country.
Too little, too late. It will take years for any new production to reach the pump and by then Joe will be unable to function at all. The idea that he can run in 2024 is a pipe dream. I would really like to know what deal he agreed to in order to have the presidency stolen for him, and with whom, exactly? Because prior to Super Tuesday in 2020 he had no chance to win the nomination.
In my opinion, federal lease and royalty prices have been underpriced for decades. This land is a public asset, and should not be given away at a lowball price. If the royalty rate is above market, the upfront leasing price will be lower after bidding. So, a raised royalty rate shares the risk of production volume more equitably between the producer and the government.
I think the feds, state and sometimes cities make more than enough money from fuel taxes.
This is totally self-serving window dressing — yet more smoke and mirrors proffered up by idiot dotard, Biden, and, the Dumb-o-crats, in order to save their political fortunes from years of destructive and foolish energy policies.
Biden isn’t serious about unshackling domestic fossil fuel production. This is just a stunt so he can claim that he’s allegedly “doing something” to address his inflationary policies.
“Blue meat” for the hopelessly Marxist Dem0crats?
Worse yet, Idiot Biden has turned his “Green Energy” goons lose and they have forced Union Pacific Railroad to scale back all fertilizer deliveries to states that need fertilizer for planting spring crops, The scale back exceeds 20% and will get even worse as no new deliveries will be accepted. We are looking at major food shortage as the crops will not get the fertilizer it needs for planting and to finish out its growth cycle. The nitrogen in fertilizer also is needed for DEH that is required for diesel engines to run. Farm equipt runs on diesel engines and the trucks that deliver America’s needs. This is a major problem. Thanks Biden/Obummer.