Where’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hiding?
As Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland manages the Federal government’s onshore subsurface mineral estate – about 700 million acres (30% of the United States) held by the Bureau of Land Management. According to their website: For fiscal year (FY) 2018, sales of oil, gas, and natural gas liquids produced from the Federal and Tribal mineral estate accounted for approximately 8 percent of all oil, 9 percent of all natural gas, and 6 percent of all natural gas liquids produced in the United States.
That number could be even higher if energy production were encouraged rather than being discouraged. But Deb Haaland made her political way by opposing traditional energy and that is an inconvenient fact for the Biden Administration right now with skyrocketing energy prices.
Here are a few ways in which Secretary Haaland is nowhere to be found:
- Her calendar hasn’t been updated in nearly a year (since March of 2021);
- The Interior Department and its associated agencies have not issued a single press release on the energy crisis/situation, much less about increasing production on federal lands;
- There have been no tweets from Sec. Haaland on the issue of increasing energy production on federal lands;
- When she DOES focus on energy issues as she did in a visit to Ohio, the focus was on infrastructure — cleaning up orphan wells, legacy pollution from extractive industries and moving toward renewables.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is at least publicly calling for ramping up production. Previously the White House was “quietly” calling for more production. But again, the head of the federal mineral estate where the feds have control over leasing and permitting is silent? Do they not want her talking about it? If not, why? Maybe because she put so much political capital into calling for a fracking ban and the Green New Deal?
