U.S. says oil, gas sales damage climate — but won’t stop them

The Biden BILLINGS, MONT. — administration is planning to sell oil and gas leases on huge tracts of public land in the U.S. West, despite the Interior Department’s conclusion that doing so could cost society billions of dollars in climate change impacts.

Administration officials announced last week that government regulators for the first time will analyze greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels extracted from government-owned lands across the U.S.

Burningthosefuelsaccounts for about 20% of energy-related U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making them a prime target for climate activists who want to shut down leasing, and President Joe Biden campaigned on pledges to end new drilling on public land.

Yet officials with the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said for now there’s little they can do to prevent the climate change impacts from burning the fuels. That’s in part because they can’t discern the significance of emissions from government-owned fuel reserves versus other sources, officials wrote in newly released documents.

The determination applies to lease sales planned early next year in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and other states.

“BLM has limited decision authority to meaningfully or measurably prevent the cumulative climate change impacts that would result from global emissions,” agency officials wrote in their Montana lease proposal.

Similar statements were included in documents released by the government for sales in other states.

The leasing plans remain subject to change as the administration continues to analyze greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on people and the environment, agency officials said Tuesday.