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When the usual oil shills say we need more drilling, leaking pipelines and deregulation. Remember to post that trump tried to give land away to drill and no one wanted it.
https://www.cpr.org/2026/01/09/bureau-of-land-management-oil-gas-auction-zero-bids-colorado/
Going once, going twice, sold to ... no one.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off leases on more than 20,000 acres of public land in Colorado for oil and gas drilling. The land, divided into 23 parcels, was offered at the minimum starting price, just $10 an acre, and could be leased indefinitely once oil and gas starts flowing.
But during the sale: crickets. Not a single parcel received a bid, and only two companies had even registered for the sale.
The sale reveals the limits of the Trump administration’s push to open more public land to oil and gas drilling. Simply put, many areas across the West with easily accessible oil are already developed.
“In general, everything that is really high value across the West that will ever produce oil has already been sold,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, which criticized the auction.
The BLM did not directly respond to criticism about the sale.
The sale represents a renewed push by the Trump Administration to ramp up domestic oil and gas production, and achieve so-called “energy dominance.” The United States is already the world’s largest producer of crude oil.
Thursday's lease sale, or lack thereof, came on the heels of a previous auction in December, which yielded nearly $5 million in revenue for Colorado and the federal government. While that may seem significant, it did not meet the threshold set by President Trump’s landmark domestic policy law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law mandates that the BLM hold a replacement sale if a quarter or more of the acres offered for leasing receive no bids.
https://www.cpr.org/2026/01/09/bureau-of-land-management-oil-gas-auction-zero-bids-colorado/
Going once, going twice, sold to ... no one.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off leases on more than 20,000 acres of public land in Colorado for oil and gas drilling. The land, divided into 23 parcels, was offered at the minimum starting price, just $10 an acre, and could be leased indefinitely once oil and gas starts flowing.
But during the sale: crickets. Not a single parcel received a bid, and only two companies had even registered for the sale.
The sale reveals the limits of the Trump administration’s push to open more public land to oil and gas drilling. Simply put, many areas across the West with easily accessible oil are already developed.
“In general, everything that is really high value across the West that will ever produce oil has already been sold,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, which criticized the auction.
The BLM did not directly respond to criticism about the sale.
The sale represents a renewed push by the Trump Administration to ramp up domestic oil and gas production, and achieve so-called “energy dominance.” The United States is already the world’s largest producer of crude oil.
Thursday's lease sale, or lack thereof, came on the heels of a previous auction in December, which yielded nearly $5 million in revenue for Colorado and the federal government. While that may seem significant, it did not meet the threshold set by President Trump’s landmark domestic policy law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law mandates that the BLM hold a replacement sale if a quarter or more of the acres offered for leasing receive no bids.
