EN
Imagine you hosted a yard sale where the featured items were a 1998 elliptical machine, a basket full of outdated charging cords, and an instruction manual for something called a “Palm Pilot.” And then, as expected, no one bought them. But instead of just admitting that no one wants a charging cord for a 2002 electric razor, you must follow a policy that says the real problem is that you haven’t held enough yard sales yet.
That would be weird and inefficient, right?
But a new mandate in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (H.R. 1), which creates a new practice of mandatory “replacement” oil and gas lease sales on our public lands, does exactly that. It forces the BLM to hold a do-over auction if a quarter or more of the land it offers receives no bids.
January’s replacement sale followed a December auction that failed to meet that threshold set by H.R. 1. In December, the BLM offered more than 50,000 acres of Colorado public land to industry for as little as $10 an acre. Companies passed on roughly 40% of those lands, clearly signaling how little value they see in developing them for oil and gas.
Under normal circumstances, the BLM would look at an auction where nobody bid on the land and conclude that the market had spoken. The agency could then move on and focus on projects that actually generate a return for taxpayers. Instead, the new law required the agency to offer the exact same parcels again, which it did less than a month later.
When the replacement sale arrived in January, the results were as you’d expect: One company finally stepped forward and bought that 1998 elliptical machine.
I’m kidding.
Not a single parcel sold. Only two companies even bothered to register for the auction, which is roughly the level of turnout you get when someone accidentally schedules a webinar titled “Advanced Spreadsheet Formatting: Part 7.”
This push for “replacement sales” is the latest installment of the “energy dominance” agenda, which is a bit odd considering the United States is already the world’s top oil producer. January’s flop in Colorado also revealed something else: In much of the West, the best oil lands have already been drilled. In other words, the problem isn’t that we aren’t holding enough auctions. It’s that the good stuff has already been leased.
Forcing the BLM to keep auctioning them doesn’t create new energy opportunities. It just creates paperwork. The BLM, already a short-staffed agency managing hundreds of millions of acres of public land, has now held two of these mandated “replacement” sales in Wyoming and Colorado. Together, they attracted bids on less than 1% of the acreage re-offered, just 160 acres out of tens of thousands, which is what economists refer to as “not a lot.”
Worse still, the replacement-sale rule ties the BLM’s hands in managing public lands for the public good. Federal law requires the agency to balance energy development with grazing, recreation, wildlife habitat, conservation and other important uses of our lands, such as hiking, fishing, and taking selfies of hiking and fishing. Re-auctioning land a month after companies already declined to bid doesn’t produce energy or better land management. It just burns taxpayer dollars and makes it harder to obtain fair value for public resources.
This isn’t sound energy policy. It’s bureaucratic busywork.
Our public lands deserve better than being stuck in an endless cycle of auctions for resources the market has already passed on. Instead of forcing the BLM to stage repeat performances for an empty room, which, as someone who has performed at more than a few comedy open mics, I can confirm is rarely a sign of strong demand, Congress should let the agency focus on managing public lands wisely.
