2023 Regular Session ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 116
BY SENATOR FRED MILLS
A RESOLUTION
To urge and request the President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the United States Department of
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to immediately adopt a new five-year offshore
leasing plan for the Gulf of Mexico to help reduce the cost of energy.
WHEREAS, the National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing
Program, since its authorization by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, has provided
significant energy, approximately one in six barrels of the United States' total oil production,
which helps fuel the great economy of America, including our agriculture economy; and
WHEREAS, the National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program, has been very effective
in helping America realize affordable energy, achieve energy security, and strengthen our
national security; and
WHEREAS, the National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program has been managed in
such a way that it is recognized as an environmentally advantaged energy province with
fifty-three percent of the carbon intensity per barrel of other producing regions worldwide,
and with one of the lowest methane venting or flaring metrics; and
WHEREAS, our nation's offshore energy represents a significant opportunity to help
improve the health of our planet due to its low carbon intensity; and
WHEREAS, since its inception, the National OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Program is
responsible for helping to create hundreds of thousands of jobs with a significant economic
impact and has generated hundreds of billions in royalties revenue for the United States
Treasury; and
WHEREAS, the United States Congress in 2020 permanently funded the Land and
Water Conservation Fund at nine hundred million per year with wide bipartisan support,
relying solely on earnings from federal offshore oil and gas leasing; the Land and Water
Conservation Fund has funded more than four billion worth of projects since its inception
in 1965 for purposes of conservation, recreation, restoration, and protection of vital national
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resources; and
WHEREAS, since 2006, more than one billion, funded exclusively by federal
offshore lease revenues, has been disbursed to four Gulf energy-producing states through the
Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act to support coastal conservation and restoration projects,
hurricane protection programs, and activities to implement marine coastal or conservation
management plans; and
WHEREAS, since 2021, the American energy policy has included the pausing and
canceling of offshore lease sales and recently the nation's previous five-year offshore leasing
plan has been allowed to lapse for the longest period in our nation's history; and
WHEREAS, in February 2023, the Institute for Energy Research issued a paper
concluding "the results show that purely as a matter of environmental protection, replacing
United States domestic production with foreign supply would be an overwhelmingly
negative tradeoff"; and
WHEREAS, calling on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to
increase production while vilifying, pausing, canceling, and delaying offshore lease sales is
not a solution, but harms the energy workers across America; and
WHEREAS, America's energy workers are skilled, dedicated, motivated, and ready
to help America produce the domestic energy needed to reduce "pain at the pump", tame
inflation, and lower food cost; and
WHEREAS, returning to regularly scheduled lease sales for offshore resources,
previously authorized by the administrations of both political parties for over five decades,
by and between thirteen United States presidents, would help reduce energy inflation; and
WHEREAS, the future production of these oil and gas resources and, consequently,
the funding of conservation, recreation, restoration, and protection, and further consequently,
the denial of environmentally advantaged, low carbon intensity barrels of production as a
substitution for higher carbon intensity barrels of production from foreign sources; and
consequently, the availability of these energy resources to help tame inflation and increase
security for American farmers, ranchers, and families; will all be negatively impacted by the
failure of the United States Department of the Interior to timely issue a five-year leasing plan
with regularly scheduled lease sales.
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THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
does hereby urge and request President Joe R. Biden Jr. and the United States Department
of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to immediately adopt a new five-year offshore leasing
plan, including regularly scheduled oil and gas lease sales for the Gulf of Mexico, a historic
energy producing province, to assist in producing a larger portfolio of some of the planet's
lowest carbon intensity barrels of oil to help reduce the cost of energy.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE
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