Oil firms violate acreage caps on land leases

May 31, 2004

Oil firms violate acreage caps on land leases

Energy: Leaseholders financially back GOP



By David Pace
The Associated Press
  

WASHINGTON - A single New Mexico family and a dozen big oil companies, including one once headed by Commerce Secretary Don Evans, now control one-quarter of all federal lands leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States despite a law intended to prevent such concentration, federal records show.

Since 1997, mainly as a result of mergers and acquisitions, six companies have exceeded the legal limit of 246,080 acres in lease holdings on public lands in states other than Alaska. But the Bureau of Land Management, in charge of enforcing the 1920 law, has chosen to extend compliance deadlines for years.

In fact, an Associated Press computer analysis found the Interior Department agency permitted companies it knew were in violation of the law in Wyoming to continue to acquire thousands of acres of new oil and gas leases in that state. The bureau has given the companies additional years to comply.
~snip~
.
.
.
The lax enforcement coincides with the Bush administration's push to open new public lands for oil and gas development. In March, bureau records showed 40 million acres of federal lands were under lease in the continental United States. That is 5.3 million more acres than when President Bush took office.

Companies and individuals that dominate federal oil and gas leasing have been major financial supporters of Bush and the Republican Party. Since 1999, the top 25 owners of federal oil and gas leases have directed 86 percent of their $8.2 million in donations to the GOP.
~snip~
.
.
.
``It's clear from the data that there is no reason for the Bush administration to issue leases on America's last remaining wild public lands, other than as a favor to their most generous political patrons,'' said Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for the Wilderness Society.
~snip~

read the full article here

###
Copyright 2004 The Register-Guard
unless labeled as being from the Associated Press (AP),
in which case Copyright 2004 Associated Press











here

..like it was their own backyard. And their cronies line their pockets. This type of action will likely speed up as we get closer to November.

Duplicate, please continue discussion in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=591864