Texas Panel Hearing: Biden Lease Policy Puts ‘Oil Patch’ Workers, Communities at Risk

The Biden administration is only putting about 20 percent of eligible federal land up for new oil leases in many areas of the country, Congressional lawmakers have been told during a Feb. 13 “field hearing” in Odessa, Texas.
And industry, community, and government leaders say it is “slow-walking” applications through a “broken permitting process” without addressing a backlog of more than 4,500 drill applications.
They say these actions by the Biden administration have driven up energy prices while restricting new oil and gas development, imperiling jobs, and threatening local governments and school districts across the nation with a looming “fiscal cliff.”
In 2022, the federal government approved 233 drilling permits a month across the United States, down from more than 400 monthly during the Trump administration, a decline profoundly impacting the 950,000 Americans who work in the industry, and the nearly 20 million jobs that rely on them, officials said….