Energy & Environment

Energy & Environment

The Big Story

Fossil fuels move forward during federal shutdown

The government shutdown isn’t stopping the Trump administration from advancing fossil fuels.

© Joshua A. Bickel, Associated Press File

When it announced its contingency plans for the shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management said staff members in charge of processing leases and permits for oil and gas, leases for coal or “other energy and mineral resources necessary for energy production” would still have to work.

Since that time, it has continued to approve drilling permits. Between Oct. 1 and Wednesday, the bureau approved 474 permits to drill on public lands.

That figure is fairly in line with previous months when the government was open, with 494 permits approved in August and 505 in September.

Interior Secretary Burgum said during a recent event that the administration is scrounging up funding wherever it can to pay people for activities such as approving permits.

“Whether it’s a an entrance fee at a park, I’ve got nobody out there to collect that, whether it’s getting permits done, we’re grabbing any cash that was laying in any drawer to try to pay those essential people, including the people that can do the permitting, so that we can keep going,” Burgum said last week during an event at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Interior Department spokesperson Kristen Peters said in an email that drilling permits were being processed “using........

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