GOP Advances Bill to Fast-Track Fracking, Logging and Mining on Public Lands

The House Natural Resources Committee advanced a portion of the GOP budget package this week that would open vast swaths of public lands to private oil and gas extraction, logging, and coal and mineral mining while fast-tracking permits and slashing oversight of proposed fossil fuel projects.

If signed into law, the bill would require the Interior Department to lease out Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Cook Inlet and Western Arctic region for oil and gas extraction, which Indigenous and climate groups have opposed for years. It would also require the U.S. Forest Service to sign long-term agreements with timber companies and would direct federal agencies to increase logging in U.S. forests by 25 percent while rescinding protections for old growth trees.

The committee’s contribution to what Republicans refer to as the “big, beautiful bill” they are negotiating in order to implement and pay for Trump’s agenda passed by a nearly party-line vote in the early hours of Wednesday morning. California Rep. Adam Gray cast the only Democratic vote in support. In a statement, Gray said he disagrees with major portions and would oppose the final GOP package if it includes cuts to Medicaid, but supported provisions in the bill to invest in water access, a priority for the Central Valley communities in his district.

Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California and ranking member on the committee, said Republicans are sacrificing the public’s natural resources in order to pay for tax cuts that primarily benefit the ultrawealthy.

“If Big Oil, Wall Street, and MAGA cultists locked themselves in a room to write a wish list, this bill would be it,” Huffman said in a statement last week.

While the bill lowers royalties for oil and gas companies fracking on public land, Republicans say it would raise $18 billion in revenues badly needed for their budget, as they attempt to push through their $4.5 trillion tax cut. Proponents of the bill say the revenues would come by mandating a big increase in oil, gas, coal, timber and mineral mining lease sales, in which federal agencies sell off tracts of land and offshore waters for private resource extraction.

However, in addition to the environmental concerns raised by activists, experts say the “drill, baby, drill” agenda pursued by President Trump and the GOP is still unlikely to meet its own stated goals. The revenue estimates are out of touch with current economic and geological conditions, including those created by the global trade war launched by Trump himself.

Still, Democrats characterized the legislation as an unprecedented giveaway to corporate polluters by climate change denialists, with Huffman calling it the “most destructive environmental bill in American history.”

“It torches clean air and water protections, hands over our public lands to polluters at fire-sale prices, and rigs the rules so oil executives can rubber-stamp their own permits in secret,” Huffman said, adding that Republicans are desperate to find ways to pay for Trump’s tax cuts. “The Trump Tax Scam forces oil and gas lease sales — no matter the cost — even on lands tribes, ranchers, and local communities have fought to protect.”

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee spent hours ahead of the vote on Tuesday night introducing amendments and attempting to draw their GOP colleagues into a debate over proposals broadly seen as unpopular. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, a Democrat who would see more public lands leased for private extraction in her state, noted that Republicans seemed unusually quiet.

“None of this is budgetary and this is why they aren’t opening their mouths today,” Stansbury said during the markup.

One of the most controversial sections of the legislation would allow corporations to pay a fee for expediting environmental impact reviews of their projects that are required for federal permits, including by hiring contractors from within industry to perform the reviews instead of regulators.

The payments would trigger time limits on environmental impact analysis to fast-track the permitting process, leaving federal agencies already facing staff layoffs and disruptive executive orders little time to consider the potential harms of major proposals, according to the Center for American Progress.

Environmental impact reviews would also be shielded from judicial review, making it much harder for local residents and environmental groups to file legal challenges against controversial mines or pipelines planned on public lands, for example.

Environmentalists call the proposal a “pay-to-play” scheme. Mike Freeman, an attorney for the environmental law group Earthjustice, said the bill would undo a century of federal law that advocates rely on to rein in polluters.

“It would require the government to lease public lands whenever an oil and gas company demands them,” Freeman said in an email. “Such a step would effectively put the oil and gas industry in charge of resources that belong to all of the American people.”

The United States is already the world’s top oil and gas producer, and domestic crude oil production reached an all-time high under the Biden administration. The next oil and gas boom that Trump has openly attempted to encourage seems more like magical thinking as his tariffs disrupt the global economy and oil prices plummet, according to Alan Zibel, the research director at the watchdog group Public Citizen.

After all, oil and gas are finite sources of energy, not renewable, and companies only invest in the expensive process of fracking the Earth to remove fossil fuels when global prices make it profitable.

“In addition to being climate denialists, Republicans seem to be geology denialists, as they believe that we can drill onshore forever in the U.S. when that’s not really how it works,” Zibel said in an interview.

Republicans often claim that their pro-industry fossil fuel policies increase production and thus decrease energy prices for domestic consumers, but oil and gas prices are set by myriad factors in a complex global market, and U.S. producers push to export more oil and gas overseas when prices drop at home.

Oil and gas firms only drill new wells when prices are high enough to offset the costs of fracking, refining and shipping the fuel into the global market. The price of oil has dropped 25 percent since January and remains volatile due to a number of global factors — but not because producers in the U.S. are pumping more out.

In fact, the latest data from the Dallas Federal Reserve shows that oil producers in West Texas expect the price of U.S. crude oil to be about $68 a barrel by the end of year, which is higher than current global prices. Zibel said prices must be between $60 to $65 a barrel for existing wells in the U.S. to remain profitable, and he does not expect broad investments in fracking new territory anytime soon.

“If oil is below $65 or $60 a barrel, they are not making money,” Zibel said. “Trump can open up all the public lands he wants, but if the price is not high enough, it’s not going to make economic sense.”

Zibel pointed to a recent shareholders report from Diamondback Energy, a Texas-based fossil fuel firm. The company told investors it believes U.S. onshore oil production has peaked and will start to decline due to plummeting prices. The CEO of Occidental Petroleum recently said U.S. production will peak within the next five years or so.

Zibel said Trump’s signature tariffs also complicates the picture for Republicans pledging to “unleash” fossil fuels from the environmental protections put in place during the Biden administration. While oil and gas may be exempt from tariffs, fracking and refining requires multiple inputs such as steel that are subject to steep new import taxes, especially when coming from China. Tariffs are also raising fears of a recession, leaving the fossil fuel industry increasingly worried about a drop in demand for fuel.

“Republicans might want to listen to the actual geologists and petroleum experts at their oil and gas donors rather than the lobbyists, because they seem to be telling a very different story,” Zibel said.