As the Independent Petroleum Association of America’s (IPAA’s) Annual Meeting in San Antonio continued on Tuesday afternoon, several senior IPAA staffers gave attendees a candid assessment of the threat posed to the E&P industry by the Biden administration. They also detailed some of the actions that IPAA is taking to protect independent producers from what can only be called an oppressive agenda meant to constrict U.S. oil and gas production.

An overview of Biden actions affecting independents. First up in this afternoon lead-off session was IPAA COO and Executive Vice President Dan Naatz (Fig. 1), who gave attendees a broad overview of the upstream problems caused by the Biden energy agenda, which he says IPAA will be fighting, all the way to the next presidential election in November 2024. Noting that the White House thinks it somehow has moral clarity, Naatz said this is “an empowered administration, where everything is focused on climate. Even the Department of Defense has to deal with climate change.”

Naatz added that the White House is “very aggressive” in its approach to what is an anti-oil-and-gas agenda and “it will be even more aggressive next year, trying to get more of its agenda done before the election.” To counteract the administration, Naatz said that IPAA is working with all of its sister associations in the industry.

He said that the Biden operatives’ priorities on energy issues are as follows:

Climate

Low-hanging fruit on federal lands

Imposing an onslaught of regulations, which equals a whole-of-government approach to stopping American production.

Naatz said that “low-hanging fruit” also can be applied to marginal wells, toward which the Biden group seems to be particularly hostile.

Another wide-ranging problem that he mentioned was the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which has been overused and abused for way too long. Passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Richard Nixon on Jan. 1, 1970, NEPA was originally intended to require federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions prior to making decisions. However, the range of actions covered by NEPA is broad and includes:

making decisions on permit applications;

adopting federal land management actions;

and constructing highways and other publicly-owned facilities.

Naatz said that “NEPA needs to be changed, as it affects way too much of the oil and gas operations.” He also noted that NEPA now affects offshore wind and even airport construction. “Senators [Joe] Manchin (Dem.-W.V.) and [John] Barosso (Rep. – Wyo.) are working together to fix it.”

Naatz concluded his portion of the briefing by noting that “politics will start to impact everything in 2024.”

A look at federal lands and waters. IPAA Vice President of Government Relations Mallori Miller (Fig. 2) focused in greater detail on the situation involving federal lands and waters. She noted that “dozens of rules have been released, or will be released, by the Department of the Interior (DOI) that will have great impacts for the industry.” Miller also pointed out how the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of DOI, has been monkeying with onshore leasing rules, seemingly in an effort to discourage or stop greater onshore oil and gas drilling and development.

Another example of trouble at Interior is the department’s disingenuous, lack-of-good-faith policymaking with respect to the five-year offshore leasing plan. In its latest draft for a five-year plan, only three lease sales are included, and not before 2025. As Miller so eloquently pointed out, the Biden team even admitted, on the record, that were it not for a mandate for offshore sales in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, it would not have included plans for any offshore lease sales.