FactCheck on "68 Million Acre" claim

xavierx · Joined: Nov 06, 2004 Posts: 5427

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_the_democrats_correct_in_sta...g_that.

Quote:

Q: Are the Democrats correct in stating that oil companies are leasing 68 million acres in the U.S. that are not being used?

A: Not exactly. More than 4,700 new holes are being drilled on current onshore leases.

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Obama (June 24): The oil companies already own drilling rights to 68 million acres of federal lands, onshore and offshore, that they haven't touched. 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production.

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According to the U.S. Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service, there are nearly 68 million acres of federal lands (onshore and off) that are part of non-producing leases as of fiscal year 2007. This is in contrast to 25.7 million acres of leased lands that are producing oil. So, there are 68 million acres of leased land on which companies aren't extracting oil, but Obama went too far when he said oil companies "haven't touched" them. As Bureau of Land Management Petroleum Engineer Bill Gewecke, who manages the onshore sites, told us, he "wouldn't say untouched, [I] would say undeveloped."

That's because these leased lands that don't contain productive drilling operations likely are not lying idle as Obama implies. There are a lot of steps and procedures involved in setting up a productive oil well on leased land, both onshore and off. The Bureau of Land Management's Web site lists the regulatory hurdles that need to be cleared as part of the larger five-step life cycle of a well. The path to setting up an offshore drilling operation is even longer, as shown in a large flow chart developed by the MMS.

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And there is a lot of activity occurring on leased lands that does not qualify as "production." For 2006, the BLM reported that there were 77,257 productive holes onshore in the U.S. Beyond that, there were 6,738 applications for drilling permits, 4,708 holes in which companies had begun drilling and 3,693 where drilling had ended among onshore lands. That's a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished that do not count as "productive" holes. And that doesn't even include holes that might have been continually drilled throughout the year for exploratory reasons.

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More on the site.

The bottom line is that these "untouched" leases are far from untouched. many are in the very long process of becoming either productive, or determining that there is nothing to produce. And there are many leases that are simply devoid of oil.

Amazingly, this is what the Republicans have been saying (I know, I can't believe Democrats were wrong, either! Wink

).

al bundy · Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 938

yea but
that doesn't change the fact that the DMC says other wise.