CrimsonPhantom
CUSA Curator
Posts: 41,347
Joined: Mar 2013
Reputation: 2371
I Root For: NM State
Location:
|
Biden* Picks Lesser Prairie Chicken over Oil and Gas Industry, American Jobs
Quote:The United States’ energy independence is under threat again as President Joe Biden invokes the Endangered Species Act to protect the lesser prairie chicken’s habitat, where the birds’ range overlaps the oil and gas rich Permian Basin.
The Biden-controlled U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have proposed the listing, another reversal of former President Donald Trump’s policies, which opened up public land for use by Americans for oil and gas leases, ranching, and recreation:
Under the Act, if we determine that a species is an endangered or threatened species throughout all or a significant portion of its range, we are required to promptly publish a proposal in the Federal Register and make a determination on our proposal within 1 year. To the maximum extent prudent and determinable, we must designate critical habitat for any species that we determine to be an endangered or threatened species under the Act. Listing a species as an endangered or threatened species and designation of critical habitat can only be completed by issuing a rule.
The Washington Post reported on the development:
The decision, one of nearly two dozen new conservation measures the administration has adopted in the past four months, underscores President Biden’s push to unravel his predecessor’s environmental policies. Biden has targeted Trump’s energy and environmental policies or proposed one of his own at the rate of about one a day, according to a Washington Post analysis.
As its numbers have dwindled, conflicts over whether to protect the bird — and potentially hamper energy development in conservative-leaning states — have only intensified.
The federal government is proposing two separate designations to try to prevent the species’ demise. The southern population of about 5,000 birds living along the New Mexico-Texas border would be considered endangered, while a northern group would be listed as threatened, a less-restrictive designation. After taking input from the public, the agency will make a final decision on these listings within a year.
Amy Lueders, a regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said on Wednesday that voluntary efforts to protect the birds have fallen short for the “long term” conservation of the bird.
Those in the oil and gas industry are sounding the alarm.
“I think it could have a substantial impact on oil and gas and energy development,” Wayne D’Angelo, a lawyer with Kelley Drye & Warren, said in the Post report. “It’s a threat that sort of kills investment and causes problems.”
According to the Post, Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Clay Nichols told reporters that the “things that would be prohibited” include actions deemed harmful to the bird or its habitat, which literally covers millions of acres of oil and gas rich land.
“Earlier this month Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) and other GOP senators, including those from Kansas and Texas, urged Interior Secretary Deb Haaland not to list the bird under the Endangered Species Act given ongoing conservation efforts,” the Post reported.
“We strongly believe it would be imprudent and harmful to ongoing and unprecedented conservation efforts in our states for the [Fish and Wildlife] Service to issue what would amount to a premature [Endangered Species Act] listing proposal,” the lawmakers wrote.
In 2014 the Fish and Wildlife Service named the lesser prairie chicken a threatened species, but that listing was overturned in court. The Trump administration did not take action and was sued by environmental groups. A 2019 settlement required the Fish and Wildlife Service to make a new listing decision by May 2021.
The Post said the prairie chicken populations have gone for “millions” to about 27,000. The number of jobs and economic benefits that would be lost in oil and gas rich states if exploration and production were halted is yet to be determined.
Link
Also:
Quote:President Joe Biden’s administration will reportedly cancel several oil and gas leases granted in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the last weeks of the Trump administration — days after defending similar leases on Alaska’s North Slope.
The decision was reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday, and would mark an attempt to reverse one of President Donald Trump’s historic achievements: the opening of ANWR’s coastal plain in his tax cut legislation in December 2017.
The Post reported that “Interior would halt the leases on the grounds that Trump officials rushed the Jan. 6 auction and did not follow proper procedures.” But environmental groups have also lobbied to reverse Trump’s decision on ANWR.
ANWR was set aside by Congress in 1980 — though biologists in Alaska have joked that Congress confused ANWR and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to the west, which has more wildlife and less oil and gas potential.
The fossil fuel industry has lobbied for ANWR to be opened, arguing that new technologies such as directional drilling and ice roads minimize the environmental impact and risk to wildlife. The local Iñupiat Alaska Native communities and the state government also support oil and gas activity in ANWR. But environmental groups oppose it, noting that the migratory Porcupine Caribou herd uses the coastal plain to calve. The Gwich’in Alaska Natives, who live further south but also hunt the caribou, and who would not benefit directly from oil and gas development, want ANWR to be closed.
Environmental groups also want ANWR close for the same reason they lobbied for the Keystone XL pipeline to be closed, though it is the most environmentally-friendly way to transport oil — namely, that they oppose all fossil fuel development, due to the risks of climate change.
Just last Wednesday, attorneys for the Biden administration Department of Justice defended the Willow oil project in the NPR-A, which was approved by the Trump administration last fall, fighting against a lawsuit by groups trying to stop it.
The country is currently experiencing a surge in gas prices.
Link
Quote:Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) decided to forgo actually doing her job of advising and consenting to Joe Biden’s various nominees, electing to instead vote for all manner of crazy and unqualified people in the name of bipartisan unity. She also recently voted for the so-called “January 6th commission.”
Well, that’s not working out too well, as Murkowski got served a large helping of said unity from Joe Biden today. It came in the form of the administration shutting down more oil leases in Alaska, further harming the state’s chief industry.
It’s almost like rubber-stamping appointments that are promising to destroy your state’s economy is a bad idea, right?
There is no need for another environmental review. They’ve been done over and over and what is happening in ANWR is proven to be safe. The oil companies follow extremely strict regulations, leaving no stone overturned when finished. The leases are not harming wildlife, and there’s no evidence to even suggest they are. Everyone knows this move by Biden is purely political. It’s a bending of the knee to the environmental lobby that helped bankroll his campaign. Now, more jobs will be lost, oil prices will keep rising, and the middle class will be hurt the most. No mean tweets, though.
Murkowski, for her part, voted to confirm Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and EPA Director Michael S. Reagan, both apparachiks of the left and both of whom have long signaled an openness to further limiting oil drilling. In other words, Murkowski is so attached to Washington D.C. that she spit in the face of her own constituents to give a bunch of wine-sipping, East Coast liberals a win. If a starker example of Republican impotence exists, I’m not aware of it (but to be sure, this isn’t the only one). Murkowski had such an easy setup to reject these appointments and show some semblance of care for the people in her state. Instead, she chose to keep her place on the cocktail circuit. And for what? The left still hates her and has returned none of her goodwill. As they say, a sucker is born every minute, and Murkowski no doubt was one of them.
Because of all this, Murkowski is facing a real challenge in 2022, and that’s if she decides to run again. Some of the things she’s been doing signal she may not even bother, and that would be a great thing for Alaska and the Republican Party.
Link
|
|