Biden's action met with bill in Senate, energy group lawsuit

Utah’s two U.S. senators, Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, have joined 22 other Republican senators in sponsoring a bill in the U.S. Senate to stop Pres. Joe Biden’s recent executive order indefinitely pausing any new oil and gas leasing on federal public lands. The bill, the Protecting our Wealth of Energy Resources Act (POWER) of 2021, led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, would prohibit the president or his secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture and Energy departments from blocking energy or mineral leasing and permitting on federal lands and waters without Congressional approval.

Meanwhile, the Western Energy Alliance has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Wyoming to halt the president’s actions. The alliance, which represents hundreds of independent oil and gas producers in Utah and elsewhere in the West, filed the suit to stop Biden’s order, which also directs an end any future federal subsidies to the industry where possible.

“The law is clear. Presidents don’t have authority to ban leasing on public lands. All Americans own the oil and natural gas beneath public lands and Congress has directed them to be responsibly developed on their behalf,” said Kathleen Sgamma, the Western Energy Alliance’s president. “Drying up new leasing puts future development as well as existing projects at risk. President Biden cannot simply ignore laws in effect for over half a century. Biden’s ban is an overreach meant to satisfy the environmental left, but it would seriously harm the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Westerners and put at risk millions more as state services become unfunded.”

“The economic impacts of the suspension of oil and gas leasing on federal lands will be devastating to Utah’s rural communities, tribes and small businesses,” Romney said. “And they will be detrimental to Utah’s energy industry, which is struggling to stay afloat and keep Utahns employed during the pandemic. Long-term decisions or pauses to energy leases should be considered and approved by Congress, not by the stroke of a pen through executive order.”

“President Biden’s energy moratorium has already done considerable damage to Utah’s economy. Presidents should not have the unilateral power to kill jobs like this. The POWER Act will check the president’s power by giving Congress a say in future leasing disruptions,” Lee said.