House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings (WA-04) released the following statement regarding Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement today that the Department of Interior will implement numerous new hurdles to the leasing and development of new oil and gas on federal lands:

“Evidently creating new energy jobs was not one of President Obama’s New Year’s resolutions. If it was, his Interior Secretary would not be announcing new hurdles and obstructions to energy development on federal lands. It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that the Administration is starting this New Year by implementing misguided policies that will destroy jobs and hinder American energy production.

This Administration has leased less acreage than any other on record and appears determined to throw up every roadblock possible to stall and ultimately halt energy development on federal lands. Few Americans would agree that the solution to any problem is more bureaucracy, more regulations and more red tape, but unfortunately that’s what we’ve seen from this Administration.

The American people want true all-of-the-above energy development and today’s announcement moves us further away from that goal. This Administration is repeatedly using its power to put American-made energy out of work when our nation should be actively pursuing the creation of all the jobs we can, including new wind and solar jobs, nuclear jobs, mining jobs, and oil and gas jobs.”

Background:

On November 5^th, Ranking Member Hastings and other Republican Members of the Natural Resources Committee sent a letter to Secretary Salazar regarding the importance of maintaining categorical exclusions, a valuable tool to improve the process of approving energy production.

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