Oil & Gas Projects

Public lands are big business in the West for gateway businesses that depend on recreation. Oil and gas developments are often prevalent in the same landscapes that boast popular recreation assets. Protecting public lands provides a steady tax base for local governments. By attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, public lands pump money into the local economy, sustain businesses, and create jobs. If we want to maintain a healthy, thriving, and diverse local economies we have to protect the recreation assets on our public lands. We can protect our public lands that drive a diverse outdoor recreation economy by ensuring oil and gas development occurs in the right places and is done responsibly.

History shows us that extractive industries are subject to commodity price fluctuation and booms and busts. Local communities can’t depend on those jobs over the long run, and some areas are too special to develop and need enhanced protections. Local communities can’t sacrifice their public lands and the health of their economies to poorly planned development proposals. We need to enact policies that can help ensure that both public land resources and tourism economies of local communities are protected. At the same time, the federal land managers can fulfill the mandate to manage public lands for multiple uses, providing oil and gas leases where appropriate and protections for sensitive landscapes, recreation and other uses where drilling is inappropriate.