[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 126-127]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             WHITE RIVER NATIONAL FOREST OIL AND GAS LEASES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Tipton) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIPTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an ongoing 
environmental review process within my district that I firmly believe 
represents yet another in a long line of abuses of private property 
rights by the Federal Government and, more specifically, the land 
management agencies that oversee the majority of the land in the United 
States.
  The outcome of this process will likely set a disturbing precedent 
under which the integrity of contracts that the Federal Government 
enters into with private parties is undermined.
  The Bureau of Land Management is currently reviewing 65 existing oil 
and gas leases issued in White River National Forest beginning in 1993. 
This retroactive review was prompted by a 2007 decision on three of the 
leases by the Interior Board of Land Appeals in which the BLM was found 
to have not formally adopted a Forest Service environmental policy 
analysis that was utilized to make these leasing decisions--basically, 
what amounts to an administrative oversight.
  It should be emphasized that there are extensive environmental 
reviews that did, in fact, take place and that the BLM played a 
significant role in that process. The agency argued as much to the 
Board of Land Appeals during the review.
  The fault was simply that the BLM needed to sign on the dotted line, 
and the Board expressly made this option available to remedy the 
problem. However, instead of adopting that commonsense approach, the 
BLM succumbed to political pressure from the environmental extremists 
and determined to revisit every one of the leases issued since 1993.
  The new proposal from the BLM deals with leases in one of two ways. 
It either imposes new, significantly restrictive stipulations that were 
not in place at the time of the original leases when they were acquired 
or it outright revokes the leases.
  The Federal Government is acting as nothing more than a highway 
robber in this case and in many others, robbing citizens and businesses 
of property that they have bought and paid for, telling us that we 
should simply be grateful that there is someone looking out for our 
greater interests.
  I highlight this particular process because, should the BLM follow 
through with certain of its proposed actions, it will set a precedent 
not only for oil and gas development, but for any lessee or permittee 
who, in entering into a contract in good faith with a Federal agency, 
may see their lease or permit threatened with retroactive revocation or 
severely restricted based on any flimsy pretext.
  Many important industries rely on Federal leases and permits, 
including livestock grazing, recreation, and renewable energy; and no 
business can successfully operate if its license to do so no longer 
enjoys protections against arbitrary cancelations or changes, depending 
on the ideology of the current occupant of the White House.
  Numerous stakeholders and local governments recognize that the BLM's 
final decision would have impacts far beyond those of the specific 
leases in question and undertook efforts to draft detailed and 
substantive feedback to the agency.

                              {time}  1100

  This is a very laborious and time-consuming process. Yet the BLM 
provided only the bare minimum public comment during this period 
required by law, and the agency's scheduled comment period overlapped 
with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year's Day holidays.
  It also overlaps another environmental review comment period for the 
well-known Roan Plateau, which involves many of the same stakeholders 
and local governments and has been under review in some form since the 
late 1990s.
  As such, several stakeholders and local governments, with the support 
of several members of Colorado's congressional delegation, requested a 
modest extension of the comment period. These extension requests are 
routinely granted by Federal agencies in recognition of the technical 
nature of these issues: interruptions due to Federal holidays and when 
there are several similar issues under simultaneous review.
  Despite this, the requests in this instance were dismissed out of 
hand. One can only conclude that the BLM is afraid of the scrutiny that 
could result from them effectuating a government taking of property 
rights under the guise of rectifying an administrative error from over 
20 years ago.
  It is abundantly clear that the BLM intends to ramrod through a 
decision that will trample on lease owners' rights by canceling or 
altering leases to the point as to make them economically unviable. 
This is, unfortunately, in line with a disturbing trend of Federal 
agency abuses of private property rights, whether it is the Forest 
Service's repeated attempts to leverage special use permits to forcibly 
acquire private water rights, or the EPA's determination to classify 
every ditch and puddle as a ``water of the United States'' to further 
insert itself into the everyday lives of ordinary, hardworking 
Americans.
  Property rights and the integrity of contracts are at the very 
foundation of our economic system, yet too often Federal agencies 
casually cast these important considerations aside.

[[Page 127]]

  If the BLM is confident that it is making the right decision and is 
willing to defend it, then they should have no problem providing 
additional time for the public and other interested stakeholders to be 
able to comment on the proposed actions in the White River National 
Forest.

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