1/ In 2017, the government offered ~11.9M acres of public land for lease and sale to oil and gas. That’s nearly 10M more than in 2016.
revealnews.org/article/trump-…
revealnews.org/article/trump-…
2/ Paonia, CO sits in the Rockies, home to artists and organic farmers.
3/ The land at its doorstep is under Bureau of Land Management control. That means President Trump is the landlord.
4/ He’s argued that opening up public land will bring energy and economic windfalls. So he has ordered the Interior Department to speed up and increase the leasing.
5/ But is drilling even profitable here?
6/ One Interior Department staffer said: “We’re giving away leases for pennies on the dollar. It’s to the detriment of the American West.”
7/ Internal emails obtained by @EENewsUpdates, our partner in this story, indicate that oil companies aren’t necessarily eager to lease all of this federal land, even at the low rates ...
@EENewsUpdates 8/ … the emails suggest that the Interior Department has been trying to convince the oil and gas industry that “federal lands are just as profitable as private land”.
@EENewsUpdates 9/ Meanwhile, the question of profit doesn’t take into account the costs of drilling to local communities. Which brings us back to Paonia.
@EENewsUpdates 10/ Over the decades, Paonia’s economy has moved away from its coal mining roots and now is tied to the surrounding lush nature, with organic farming, tourism and hunting.
@EENewsUpdates 11/ But Trump doesn’t seem to worry that fossil fuel extraction has its costs – to the environment and people’s health.
@EENewsUpdates 12/ Some in Paonia favor drilling while others fear unintended environmental impacts. A major question remains: Whose interests are represented?
@EENewsUpdates 13/ Local vineyard & winery owner Brent Helleckson notes: “You’ve taken a public good and converted it to a private asset. We should be very careful about where we do that.”
