A federal out this week shows that the Bureau of Land Management has more than halved the time spent reviewing oil and gas drilling permits, a reflection of how the agency's priorities have shifted under the Trump administration.
The Government Accountability Office, an independent federal government watchdog, found that between May 2016 and June 2019, the BLM cut the average time it spent reviewing oil and gas drilling applications from 196 days to 94 days.
Frank Rusco, a director of the GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team and the report's author, said the numbers suggest, in part, that the BLM is becoming more efficient.
鈥淏ut on the other hand, they鈥檝e also focused more on [drilling permits], so they鈥檝e pulled people who might have been doing inspections of ongoing drilling operations, for example, and they鈥檝e pulled them to work on approving applications for permits to drill,鈥� Rusco said.
Rusco said this could mean environmental reviews have been rushed to favor industry.
According to the report, less than 5% of the 23,706 applications BLM received between 2014 and 2019 have not been approved. And nearly half of the approved permits are not in use 鈥� a finding that suggests the BLM's prioritization of oil and gas permits is unnecessary.
鈥淔orcing federal employees to drop what they鈥檙e doing to grant more oil and gas drilling permits that won鈥檛 even be used is a perfect example of everything wrong with this administration,鈥� House Natural Resources Chairman Ra煤l Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, whose request prompted the GAO inquiry, said in a .
The report recommends that the BLM institute a formal process for prioritizing permits at the field office level, in addition to more efficiently documenting and responding to technical issues in data collection.
鈥淎nd that is probably more important than anything else,鈥� Rusco said. 鈥淭hey can get better data, they can see more clearly what they need to do to be better managers of federal lands. And then we鈥檒l all get a better outcome.鈥�
You can read the full report .
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