Republican Senators’ New Bill Would Hand Over Already Scarce Public Lands to Big Oil

The American Independent: “Tens of millions of acres of federal public lands were already offered for oil and gas development by the Donald Trump administration. But if a group of Republican senators gets its way, the federal government will have no say at all in whether to allow future drilling and mining on many of the lands it owns” 

Accountable.US: “The lobbyist-filled Trump administration didn’t just carve and cut corners for these oil-funded front groups, it gleefully took a meat cleaver to our national monuments and land protections”

Accountable.US: “These lands are not owned by the state — they are for the American people to enjoy, not for greedy oil and gas companies to exploit. We cannot let senators deep in the pocket of their Big Oil donors continue to damage our already-diminished public lands” 

Washington, D.C. — A group of Republican senators are pushing a new bill, The Federal Land Freedom Act, that seeks to eliminate federal regulations surrounding public lands and move power to the hands of state governments, further limiting our already-scarce public lands, The American Independent reports. 

“Apparently, four years of the Trump administration’s attacks on tens of millions of acres of our public lands wasn’t enough for these senators. They are once again looking for ways to auction off our national monuments and wildlife refuges to the highest bidder,” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US. “These lands are not owned by the state — they are for the American people to enjoy, not for greedy oil and gas companies to exploit. We cannot let senators deep in the pocket of their Big Oil donors continue to damage our already-diminished public lands.” 

The bill, introduced by Senators Kevin Cramer (R-SD) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK), is disguised as a states’ rights issue, falsely claiming existing protections of public lands has led to “intrusive federal bureaucracy.” If successful, the legislation would allow individual states to “develop all of the energy resources on the federal lands located within that state’s borders,” including allowing drilling and mining in previously protected public lands, monuments, and wildlife refuges. Additionally, The American Independent reports that the bill would “eliminate any judicial review of state leases or permitting and would exempt the drilling from any of the protections provided by the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, National Historic Preservation Act, or Administrative Procedures Act.” 

Read more from The American Independent here. 

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