'The Answer Is No, You Can't': John Barrasso Grills Tracy Stone-Manning About BLM Comments System

4 months ago

At Thursday's Senate Energy Committee hearing, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) grilled BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning about public comments.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Limited on time, I'm gonna forego my second round of questions

00:03But I would ask people to try to keep their questions to three minutes so that we can get through everyone who wants a second

00:09chance. Thank you, Chairman.

00:10Ranking Member Bross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Stoneman, the Bureau has yet to issue leases to the winning bidders of the December

00:172020 oil and gas leases. So it's now 2024, 2020 to 2024. When do you plan to issue the leases?

00:25Senator, thank you for that question. We are still working our way through

00:30multiple court decisions.

00:33When we issue them, we want them to be durable and stick. Because, you know, the law requires you issue the leases within

00:3960 days and it's now been over three and a half years.

00:43So when do you plan, you know, give me a date, when you plan to issue these leases that by law should have been

00:50released. Senator, I don't have a date for you at this time. Okay, three and a half years, long time. Again,

00:56we need a date. Next, in June of 2022, the Bureau settled a lawsuit related to oil and gas leases that it had issued between

01:052015 and 2020 in Wyoming. In that settlement, the Bureau agreed to update the environmental analysis of the leases.

01:12So the Bureau's Wyoming office, the state office in Wyoming of the Bureau of Land Management,

01:18says they finished updating exactly what you wanted last summer, finished what you asked for last summer. So

01:24why is your Bureau not then released this updated analysis?

01:29Senator, again, as I was mentioning, we are

01:32reconciling

01:33different court decisions and opinions throughout our,

01:38throughout the West, and we want to make sure that we are consistent.

01:41It seems like a lot of foot dragging. The state officers

01:44can't issue the permits to drill on these leases, refuses to until the Bureau releases the updated analysis,

01:49which is now done over, which is done a year ago. So again, when will the Bureau release that analysis?

01:56I'm sorry, which analysis? The one that was done a year ago by the Bureau, Wyoming's Bureau of Land Management, based on the

02:032022 settlement. Yeah, again, Senator, I don't have a date for you.

02:06Yeah, well, we need a date. You can see how every member of this side says this is a deliberate

02:12sabotage of American energy by an administration with this approach,

02:17which is a pipe dream about their view of when we can get to a

02:22carbon-free America. And as our hearing showed last week, Mr. Chairman,

02:28China's beating us to this because they're putting all the energy into AI, and that puts us at a competitive world disadvantage.

02:33Final question, so we're trying to keep this under three minutes. So last weekend,

02:37I was at the Wyoming Stock Growers Summer Convention in Douglas. A number of folks expressed concern about the process

02:43by which your Bureau considers public comments.

02:46Does the Bureau require individuals who submit public comments to identify who they are and where they are from?

02:55Senator, I

02:56believe that is the case. And if I could revisit one, if I could revisit your last question,

03:02I don't think it's sabotage to be at record production highs for oil

03:08and to issue 11,000 APD. It's a sabotage of public land use of it, of the multiple use of the lands on public land.

03:15Well, so this is the question, getting the question in front right now.

03:18So someone from a country like China or Russia or a computer,

03:21which doesn't want us to develop our energy or our mineral resources, are they allowed to submit public comments?

03:28Is that correct? Because that's what we're hearing.

03:33The answer is yes. Yeah, I assume they are.

03:35Can the Bureau even determine then whether a comment has submitted by a human or by a machine?

03:43The answer is no, you can't.

03:46In light of all this, shouldn't the Bureau give the most weight to comments from the people and the

03:51communities who actually live, as my friend and colleague just said of what's happening in Idaho and what's happening, who actually live and most affected

03:58by the proposals? You might have suggested that that your colleague has bots putting in comments.

04:03I don't think that's true.

04:05We read the comments very thoroughly.

04:07I think that we can tell when it's a bot and when it's a Russian and when it's when it's an actual Idaho,

04:14and as the case is with what we got from the lava project.

04:17I don't think, I don't understand what you're getting at, Senator.

04:20We're getting at the fact that it seems that the comments coming in and are being counted as equal, those have been in the land

04:24for five generations and those coming from communist China. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

04:28Senator Murkowski.

'The Answer Is No, You Can't': John Barrasso Grills Tracy Stone-Manning About BLM Comments System

Category

Transcript

Recommended