Trump Just Made the Biggest Sale of Drilling Rights on Federal Land in 4 Years
10th February 2017
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made its largest lease sale in four years, marking the start of President Donald Trump’s plans to expand drilling on federal lands.
BLM sold drilling rights on 278 parcels of public land for $129.3 million. Bids ranged from $2 per acre to $16,500 per acre. The land sold was mostly located in Wyoming — about half of which is directly controlled by the federal government.
Well, it’s not really Trump; nor is it clear that he had any hand in it. It does suggest, of course, that the Bureau of Land Management is prepared to lick the hand that feeds it.
I really dislike this trend to ascribe everything that the government is doing, whether good or bad (depending on the viewpoint) to Trump. Unless he issues an executive order or gets on the phone to tell somebody what to do, the most that can be said is that the bureaucracy is taking their tone from the top, which is customary in any organization. More interesting, I think, is where bureaucrats continue in Normal Democrat Mode even after the change of administration. Of course, the DemLegHump Media aren’t really interested in drawing any attention to such things.
Rolling back federal restrictions on public lands would create 2.7 million jobs and add $663 billion to the economy each year for the next 30 years, according to a 2016 study by Louisiana State University and the free-market Institute for Energy Research.
Opening these lands and waters could boost wages by $5.1 trillion, generating $3.9 trillion in new federal tax revenue over the next 37 years according to the research. Increased energy development could create 2.7 million new jobs.
Such prognostications tend to be self-serving, especially when issued by ‘think tanks’ with a political agenda. Unfortunately, what passes for journalism today has a time horizon of about 48 hours, so there’s very little chance of somebody keeping track of these predictions, especially over the course of ’37 years’, which is why making such predictions is merely hot air.