Report: Drilling Permits Plummet Under Biden Administration After Peaking in April

Data from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shows that approved permits to drill oil and gas on public lands have seen a substantial drop off under President Joe Biden’s administration after peaking in April of 2021, according to a report.

Last April, approved permits topped out at 643 but gradually declined since, with two minor increases in September and November of last year, Environment and Energy Publishing (E&E News) reported. In January — the month that saw the second-lowest permit approvals during the Biden presidency — only 95 permits were granted, marking an 85 percent drop-off since April 2021, according to E&E News. February produced a minor increase in permit approvals, registering at 186, which was still the fourth lowest in a single month during Biden’s term to date.

Moreover, outputs from New Mexico and Wyoming have gradually tapered off, according to the states’ BLM offices, per E&E News.

Spokesperson Melissa Schwartz of the Interior Department, which supervises the BLM, told E&E news via email that the agency is efficient, noting approval turnaround time had dropped more than 50 percent over the last decade. “Schwartz also noted that the oil and gas industry holds significant drilling rights already,” E&E News reports. “Many of the drilling permits held by industry — and 60 percent of the acreage leased to oil producers — sits unused, she said.”

Biden and White House press secretary Jen Psaki have focused on the sentiment, but fail to acknowledge “American drillers need feasible financing teams to drill on private land,” Breitbart News reported Wednesday:

“What additional permits do they need? The leases are there. The permits are there. I don’t think they need an embroidered invitation to drill. They are oil companies,” she claimed about the feasibility of oil drilling.

While the Psaki and President Joe Biden have cited numerous times that oil companies should be drilling on their 9,000 prepared oil leases to fill the void in the market, the cost of financing new oil sites has dramatically risen due to the Biden administration, which has effectively priced new oil production out of the market.

The cost of capital in 2022 is reportedly 20 percentage points more costly for long-cycle developments than in the past. “Ten years ago, the ‘cost of capital’ for developing oil and gas as compared to renewable projects was pretty much the same, falling consistently between 8% and 10%. But not anymore,” Bloomberg reported in November.

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Biden has waged a war on both public and private financing of oil drilling while subsidizing green new deal-like energy plans. The result has been that American oil production is down from 2019, the year before the pandemic. Hard numbers suggest 2022 oil production is 12 million barrels or 8 percent less than in 2019.

Kathleen Sgama, president of the Western Energy Alliance, told E&E News that the White House has drummed up a red herring by honing in on already approved permits and leases:

Just because Acme O&G isn’t using a permit right away doesn’t mean that ABC O&G doesn’t need one for a well it’s planning to drill now. If the federal permitting situation weren’t so inefficient and fraught with political interference, companies wouldn’t need to request a large inventory even years in advance.

Moreover, E&E News notes the Interior Department “is developing regulations on oil and gas that will increase royalty rates and bonding requirements on federal leases, as well as impose new methane rules,” which will further hamper the industry.