Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Oil And Gas Leases topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senator Bross presses bureau official on multi‑year delay issuing December 2020 oil and gas leases
Summary
At a Senate Committee hearing, Ranking Member Bross pressed a bureau official, "Mister Stonehen," for a calendar date to issue leases from a December 2020 oil and gas sale; the bureau cited multiple court decisions and said it had no date to provide. Bross also raised a June 2022 settlement and an updated Wyoming environmental analysis that he said has not been released.
Ranking Member Bross pressed a bureau official on a multi‑year delay in issuing leases from a December 2020 oil and gas sale during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
"Mister Stonehen, the bureau has yet to issue leases to the winning bidders of the December 2020 oil and gas leases," Bross asked, noting the time elapsed from 2020 to 2024 and demanding a date for issuance.
Mister Stonehen, identified in the hearing as a bureau official, replied: "We are still working our way through multiple court decisions. When we issue them, we want them to be durable and stick," and said the bureau did not have a date to provide.
Bross pressed that "the law requires you issue the leases within 60 days," saying it had been "over 3 and a half years," and again sought a calendar date for issuance.
Bross also cited a June 2022 settlement involving leases issued between 2015 and 2020 in Wyoming and told the committee that "the state office in Wyoming of the Bureau of Land Management says they finished updating exactly what you wanted last summer." He asked why the bureau had not released that updated environmental analysis.
Stonehen said the bureau is "reconciling different court decisions and opinions throughout the West" and that the agency seeks consistency across jurisdictions before moving forward. He again said he did not have a date to provide for releasing the analysis or issuing the leases.
Bross characterized the delay as "a deliberate sabotage of American energy by an administration," described the agency approach as a "pipe dream" about a carbon‑free future, and argued the delay harms U.S. competitive position, saying: "China's beaten us to this because they're putting all the energy into AI, and that puts us at a competitive world disadvantage." The hearing transcript records no formal response that provided a calendar date or timeline for release.
The exchange concluded with the bureau official reiterating he had no date for issuance or release of the updated analysis. No vote or formal action on the leases was recorded in the transcript.
