According to the Interior Department, last year there were 18,721 oil, gas and geothermal leases on more than 12.4 million acres of federal land in Wyoming. The Bureau of Land Management reports that more than 486.4 million cubic feet of natural gas were produced from those leases. And they should not be. Some areas should remain off limits, and all drilling and development must be subject to strict controls to protect the environment. But before discussing those points, let me first put matters into a broader context.
Nobody can deny that natural-gas production is very important.
Natural gas provides nearly a quarter of the country's energy. Currently the United States is nearly self-sufficient in meeting annual domestic demand for 22 trillion cubic feet of gas, although we have been importing about 3.4 tcf, almost all from Canada. Federal lands play a large role, producing about 11 percent of the natural gas produced onshore in the United States. In fact, between 1992 and 1999 there was a nearly 60 percent overall increase in the production of natural gas on federal onshore lands, which include the national forests and BLM lands in Wyoming. Almost 50 percent of that projected increase is expected to be used to generate electricity.