Biden's Offshore Oil & Gas Moratorium Threatens Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF)
Fact: 'Drill baby drill' isn't at odds with conservation.
President Biden’s midnight order to bar future offshore oil and gas drilling exploration on 625 million acres will not only undermine the economy and national security, but also conservation funding - namely the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) - too.
Per the Department of Interior (DOI) Natural Resources Revenue Data webpage, LWCF is funded primarily by offshore oil and gas royalties to the tune of $900M a year.
Authorization and funding
On March 12, 2019, the President signed into law the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act (formerly the Natural Resources Management Act). This bill reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund and also permanently authorizes the fund, which means the fund no longer needs to be reauthorized by Congress in order to receive funding. Congress must still appropriate funds for the program each year during the annual budget process in order for the LWCF to receive funds.
Annual funding
The fund doesn't receive any tax revenue, but is instead funded largely by offshore oil and gas revenue. ONRR disburses that revenue to the fund each year.
The LWCF is authorized to receive and distribute up to $900 million each year, but the fund is subject to congressional budget appropriations. Actual annual appropriations to the fund met the authorized threshold only twice (1998, 2001), while annual appropriations have been limited to between $255 million and $450 million since 2008.
As I told Fox Digital’s Andy Mark Miller this week:
"President Biden's offshore oil and gas ban is not only harmful to our economy and national security, but also jeopardizes the future of conservation in America," Gabriella Hoffman, Independent Women’s Forum Center for Energy & Conservation director, told Fox News Digital.
Hoffman pointed to, among other concerns, the Land & Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which is funded in large part by $900 million in royalties from oil and gas companies.
"It was a simple idea: use revenues from the depletion of one natural resource - offshore oil and gas - to support the conservation of another precious resource - our land and water," the fund’s website states. That fund will presumably lose out on those royalties as a result of Biden’s decision, Hoffman warned.
The Western Energy Allegiance warned that forbidding future offshore O&G leases is likely to jeopardize $2.8B “annually for national parks and community outdoor projects” under LWCF and the Great American Outdoors Act (which permanently funded LWCF).
Federal oil and natural gas revenues almost exclusively fund the $2.8 billion annually for federal conservation programs under the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), with offshore revenues funding 100 percent of the $900 million for the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).
The DOI responded to Andy’s article saying there won’t be short-term impacts as a result of this decision. But I countered their statement and told Fox Digital:
"President Trump signed the Great American Outdoors Act into law in 2020 to permanently fund the LWCF," Hoffman said. "Biden's recent actions will weaken this law and set back true conservation efforts by decades."
…
"Biden's anti-oil and gas decree could undermine president-elect Trump's 'drill baby drill' agenda and make us more dependent on imports from foreign countries that don't respect the environment," Hoffman told Fox News Digital.
Read Andy’s fantastic piece HERE and make sure to follow our IWF Center for Energy and Conservation for the latest energy + conservation policy updates.