There’s a good chance that Senator Steve Daines’ (R-Mont.) will try to sneak through his “Drill Everywhere” bill, S.460, via Congress’ ongoing budget reconciliation process. That is very bad news for hunters, fishermen, and other outdoor enthusiasts across the West.
Daines’ legislation, if enacted, would throw sportsmen under the bus by subverting all other public land and natural resource values to one single purpose: oil and gas drilling.
It specifically requires lease sales on “all available acreage” in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Nevada, and in “any other state in which there is land available for oil and natural gas leasing.”
And don’t think your favorite hunting or fishing spot is immune because it has an existing protected status, Daines’ bill explicitly opens areas designated “for environmental conservation purposes … wetlands restoration, and habitat protection.’’ It also forbids any future president from delaying or cancelling any lease sale.
Senator Daines wants to give oil companies carte blanche to exploit our federal public lands and waters as they see fit, trampling over every other user group that utilizes these lands in the process and undermining the proven, longstanding, and genuinely conservative concept of multiple use management.
But here’s the craziest part: Senator Daines is doing this despite the fact that the United States is currently breaking all previous global oil and gas production records and producing more oil and natural gas than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia.
So why would the Senator choose now—a time of record production, millions of leased acres, and thousands of unused permits—to betray sportsmen and other outdoor lovers in Montana and across the West?
Apparently, he has fallen into a phony “energy emergency” rabbit hole.
One of President Trump’s first actions upon returning to office was issuing an “Energy Emergency” executive order based on a fallacy that the U.S. has not been producing enough oil and gas.
In introducing S. 480, Daines appears to be leaning into this pretend reality as an excuse to curry favor with oil and gas producers. However, this bill—like the executive order—is completely divorced from even the most basic energy market fundamentals. It is actually bad for the U.S. oil and gas industry.
One of those energy market fundamentals is U.S. geology. Our oil is deeper, harder, and more expensive to extract than oil in some other parts of the world. That means if the price of oil falls much below its current $60 per barrel price, a big portion of U.S. shale oil becomes unprofitable to produce.
At this price, there is zero incentive for oil companies to produce more oil than they’re already producing, as doing so can drive down the global price of oil even further. That would hurt U.S. producers and benefit oil producers in places with shallower reserves, like Saudi Arabia.
Also, being already at or near record production, oil company CEOs are reluctant to invest profits into additional drilling, preferring instead to increase dividends to shareholders.
In fact, there are already signs that a global oil glut is hurting U.S. producers. Lower demand due to economic uncertainty along with a boost in production by OPEC countries is keeping oil prices near or below the profitability threshold for U.S. producers.
Neither Trump’s energy emergency policies—such as using eminent domain to take over private property and slashing environmental impact reviews—nor Daines’ companion drill everywhere bill will change these basic market realities.
In addition to contradicting markets, these actions also go directly against what the majority of voters in Montana want. A recent poll found that nearly three in four Montanans say drilling should be limited to areas where there is a high likelihood of producing oil and gas.
S.460 is unlikely to result in a single additional drop of oil being produced, but by making oil and gas production the priority use for most of our federal public lands, these efforts will lead to a stockpiling of leases that places more and more areas off limits to other uses.
It’s nothing short of an all-out assault on the Western outdoor lifestyle.
So, whether you hunt, fish, hike, bike, camp or climb, your favorite places and opportunities to enjoy America’s great outdoors will be greatly diminished if S. 460, Senator Daines’ drill everywhere bill becomes law.
David Jenkins is president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship, a national organization with 650 members in Montana.