Oil and Gas Companies Bid on Just 6.7 Percent of Acres Offered by BLM [1]
"For all of the administration's efforts to open more federal and tribal lands to drilling, oil and gas companies bid on just 6.7 percent of the acreage offered for sale by the Bureau of Land Management in President Trump's first year.
In comparison, energy firms bought up 47 percent of acres tendered by BLM in 2016, according to one data set in the bureau's annual oil and gas statistics.
Overall, industry bids dropped only slightly from 2016 to 2017, but the percentages vary widely because of a drastic jump in the number of acres offered by Trump's BLM. Last year, companies had the option to lease nearly 12 million acres of public land — more than in any other year since 2009. Most of the acreage was offered in a National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska lease sale that drew limited interest (Energywire, Dec. 7, 2017).
In 2016, former President Obama's last year in office, the federal government opened just under 2 million acres for sale, the BLM data show."