Native American oil boom snarls Biden’s climate push
NEW TOWN, N.D. — On oil well pads carved from the wheat fields around Lake Sakakawea, hundreds of pump jacks slowly bob to extract 100 million barrels of crude annually from a reservation shared by three Native American tribes.
About half their 16,000 members live on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation atop one of the biggest U.S. oil discoveries in decades, North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation.
The drilling rush has brought the tribes more than $1.5 billion and counting, and they hope it will last another 20 to 25 years. The boom also propelled an almost tenfold spike in oil production from Native American lands since 2009, federal data show, complicating efforts by President Joe Biden to curb carbon emissions.
Burning of oil from tribal lands overseen by the U.S. government now produces greenhouse gases equivalent to about 12 million vehicles a year, according to an Associated Press analysis. But Biden exempted Native American lands from a suspension of new oil and gas leases on government-managed land in deference to tribes’ sovereign status.
A judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked the suspension June 15, but the administration continues to develop plans that could extend the ban or make leases more costly.
With tribal lands now producing more than 3% of U.S. oil and huge reserves untapped, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to lead a U.S. cabinet-level agency — faces competing pressures to help a small number of tribes develop their fossil fuels while also addressing
climate change that affects all Native communities.
“We’re one of the few tribes that have elected to develop our energy resources. That’s our right,” tribal Chairman Mark Fox told AP at the opening of a Fort Berthold museum and cultural center built with oil revenue. “We can develop those resources and do it responsibly so our children and grandchildren for the next 100 years have somewhere to live.”
Today, leaders of the three tribes view oil as their salvation and want to keep drilling before it’s depleted and the world moves past fossil fuels.
And they want the Biden administration to speed up drilling permits and fend off efforts to shut down a pipeline carrying most reservation oil to refineries.
Yet tribes left out of the drilling boom have become outspoken against fossil fuels as climate change worsens. One is the Standing Rock Sioux about 100 miles to the south.
Home to the Dakota and Lakota nations, Standing Rock gained prominence
during a monthslong standoff between law enforcement and protesters, including tribal officials, who tried to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline that carries Fort Berthold crude.
A judge revoked the pipeline’s government permit because of inadequate environmental analysis and allowed crude to flow during a new review.
However, Standing Rock wants the administration to halt the oil for good, fearing a pipeline break could contaminate its drinking water.
Meantime, attention surrounding the skirmish provided the Sioux with foundation backing to develop a wind farm in Porcupine Hills
Only a dozen of the 326 tribal reservations produce significant oil, according to a drilling analysis provided to AP by S&P Global Platts.
Biden’s nominee to oversee them as assistant secretary for Indian affairs, Bryan Newland, recently told a U.S. Senate committee the administration recognizes the importance of oil and gas to some reservations.