Enviros Return Oil/Gas Industry Fire on Access to Public Lands

"Oil and gas drillers haven't been pushed off federal lands by the Obama administration, an environmental group contends, so much as they have jumped at other opportunities.

A new report by the Wilderness Society challenges a charge frequently leveled by the oil and gas industry -- that the reduction in leasing by the Interior Department shows a hostility to fossil energy development.

Instead, the group says, discoveries of vast natural gas deposits under non-federal lands have increased supply and driven down the price of gas, prompting industry to pull back on leasing."

Mike Soraghan reports for Greenwire February 23, 2010.

Source: Greenwire, 02/24/2010