Leased Oil Lands Sitting Idle?

Tue, July 22, 2008 - 10:32 AM

WASHINGTON – Tampa’s freshman Rep. Kathy Castor may have gone too far when she declared in a press release last week, “There are 68 million acres of federal land already leased by oil companies for energy production now but sitting idle.”

Castor and other Democrats who make such assertions are not correct, according to an analysis by the non-partisan FactCheck.org, a non-profit monitor of accuracy in major political debates, speeches and interviews that is operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are among other Democrats who, like Castor, have been saying that the oil companies already have more land than they know what to do with.

Here’s what FactCheck.org found to be actually the case: here.

In short, there are a lot of steps and procedures involved in setting up a productive oil well on leased land, both onshore and off, and there is a lot of activity occurring on leased lands that does not qualify as "production."

For 2006, the BLM reported there were 77,257 productive holes onshore in the U.S. Beyond that, there were 6,738 applications for drilling permits, 4,708 holes in which companies had begun drilling and 3,693 where drilling had ended among onshore lands. That's a total of more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished that do not count as "productive" holes. And that doesn't even include holes that might have been continually drilled throughout the year for exploratory reasons.

Those Democratic claims come as Republicans – including John McCain, have been arguing that a federal ban on drilling for oil in offshore areas, including off the coasts of Florida, should be lifted. And early this month, President Bush repealed such presidential ban.

-- Billy House, Media General News Service