"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. [2]