Where Is Oil Found In The US? Drilling And Exploration On Federal Lands Opposed By Most Americans

The proportion of Americans who believe federal lands, such as national parks and forest reserves, should be protected from oil drilling and exploration rose to a slight majority of 53 percent from about a third over the past five years, a poll released by Gallup Friday indicated.

The results marked the first time since the research organization began posing the question in 2012 that the percentage opposed to opening public lands for drilling outnumbered those who favored it, with 46 percent approving of the practice in this year’s survey. That figure was down from nearly two-thirds five years earlier.

Read: Oil Discovery In Alaska Largest Found In 30 Years

Among the more than 1,000 adults surveyed via both landlines and cellphones in all 50 states at the beginning of March, the split in attitudes varied with party affiliation, age and education levels. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans favored government land leasing for oil and gas companies to search and drill, compared to just over one quarter of Democrats. The younger and more educated the participants, the less likely they were to approve of such leasing.

The Bureau of Land Management leased 810,000 acres of federal and tribal lands in 2015, according to the agency’s most recent data. It doled out 4,228 drilling permits, a 10 percent increase over 2014. However, it noted that, thanks to the uptick in permits offered, the number of permits not yet used by the oil and gas industry stood at a “record high” of 7,500. All of them were “ready for immediate use without further review or approval by the agency.”

The sector has dramatically slowed its drilling and exploration efforts in recent years following a substantial decline in the price of petroleum, from over $100 per barrel in mid-2014 to around $50 today. That was despite efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with several non-member nations, to boost prices by cutting back their supply.

Read: Can Trump Reverse Obama’s Arctic, Atlantic Drilling Ban? Probably Not

While former President Barack Obama used an obscure law to protect large swaths of the Arctic Sea from drilling in the waning days of his presidency, President Donald Trump has pledged to do just the opposite. In mid-March, Trump rolled back an Obama-era regulation requiring companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing—in which water, chemicals and sands are pumped into the earth to extract oil and gas—on federal lands. His interior secretary nominee, Ryan Zinke, who has voiced his support for expansion of drilling and exploration on public lands, was sworn in March 1.