A House Republican bill to nullify the Biden administration’s move to protect swaths of federal land from drilling is reigniting a dispute over energy development winners and losers.
The debate is dividing political allies and spotlighting the broader conflict between conservation, energy production and economic growth for impoverished areas that Democrats are struggling to navigate going into the 2024 election.
At stake is roughly 336,000 acres of land in northwestern New Mexico sacred to multiple tribes and more than 20,000 individual Native Americans who stand to lose revenue from potential energy development. The area around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in the oil-and-gas rich San Juan Basin already is the site of significant drilling.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in June announced a 20-year ban on new oil, gas and mining leasing and development on federal lands within 10 miles of Chaco Canyon, the ancestral and cultural home to various tribes, including Pueblos and Navajos.
“This place is really like ancient, other sacred places, like the city of Jerusalem,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who supports the ban. “It is a place of prayer, of worship.”
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) is seeking to void Haaland’s public land order, and the Republican-led Natural Resources Committee advanced legislation (
Illustrating the complex tradeoffs at play, Crane is getting support from Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren. Interior’s decision to withdraw the federal lands within 10 miles of the park disrespected tribal sovereignty and would hurt tribal members, or allottees, who depend on oil and gas royalties, Nygren testified during a July hearing.
Crane’s bill faces tough hurdles in Congress, and a veto by President Joe Biden. The fight over the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Canyon is another example of the administration’s tightrope walk on stewardship of federal lands. Biden on Aug. 8 designated a new national monument around the Grand Canyon to ban future uranium mining on approximately 1 million federal acres surrounding one of America’s most iconic landscapes, drawing more GOP criticism.
The Bureau of Land Management estimated the impact on Navajo allottees to be up to about $589,000 in forgone mineral royalties, accrued annually over the 20-year period, in its final environmental assessment of the federal land withdrawal. But according to Enduring Resources, an oil and gas company operating in the region, the BLM estimate is far too low because it doesn’t account for the indirect economic impacts on allottees as a result of the federal land withdrawal, a move that could make the allottees’ adjacent tracts worthless.
The forgone royalties for the Navajo allottees tracts would be closer to $195 million over 20 years, Anita Ashland, a senior land consultant with Enduring Resources, told House lawmakers in July.
The agency and the company likely use different assumptions over how much energy production might occur over the next two decades, which could account for the large discrepancy, said Megan Lawson, an economist with Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based independent nonprofit research group. Also, neither figure captures “the value of land protection” and its economic benefits, Lawson said.
Checkerboard Landscape
New Mexico ranked second after Texas in US crude oil production last year, accounting for more than 13% of the nation’s total, and seventh in natural gas production, the federal Energy Information Administration reported.
The Chaco region embodies the complexities of the West’s checkerboard landscape, where boundaries among federal, state, tribal, and private lands aren’t as clear-cut as they appear on a map. This configuration complicates any effort to drill or mine the land.
Interior’s decision to protect the federal lands within Chaco’s 10-mile buffer zone doesn’t affect existing leases or any energy activity on non-federal lands. So allottees can still opt to lease their lands to oil and gas companies. But the affected lands are adjacent to allottees’ parcels, making it much more difficult for developers to extract natural resources.
“Allottees’ interests will be completely nullified in areas where allotted lands are not contiguously aligned or grouped in such a way that allows a company to extract minerals through horizontal drilling,” Nygren said during the July hearing. “This will result in minerals remaining stranded, stagnating future development.”
The federal government, when dealing with checkerboard landscape, is trying to “thread a needle,” weighing economic realities against environmental and cultural stewardship, said John Leshy, distinguished professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco.
The Navajo allottees “don’t have a legal right to force development of adjacent land” even if the withdrawal devalues their own mineral rights, Leshy, who has a background in US public land history and law said.
‘Uncomfortable’ Tension
The opposition from some in the Navajo Nation to Haaland’s land withdrawal and the allottees’ potential loss of royalties puts progressive Democrats who support clean energy, tribal sovereignty, and economic prosperity for Native Americans in a tough political spot.
“They’re not supposed to conflict, but they do,” said the Natural Resources panel’s top Democrat Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.), of the “uncomfortable” tension around the economics of the region and the importance of protecting Chaco Canyon. Navajo Nation leaders haven’t always opposed the 10-mile buffer zone, he said. The tribe, which supported the protection of Chaco for generations and considers the area sacred, previously proposed a five-mile buffer zone for federal land withdrawal. BLM ultimately rejected that recommendation in favor of the larger perimeter.
Stansbury, whose district encompasses Albuquerque, called GOP accounts of widespread opposition to Interior’s decision “a false narrative.” Tribes “have been asking numerous secretaries of both parties over the years to put in a buffer zone around the park. It’s not like this effort appeared out of nowhere,” she said in a July interview.
Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, both interior secretaries under President Donald Trump, temporarily extended protections for Chaco to include the 10-mile buffer zone. Zinke, now a Republican congressman from Montana, is a co-sponsor of Crane’s bill to jettison that protection.
Energy extraction has continued, although BLM hasn’t leased new federal land for oil and gas development in the 10-mile buffer around Chaco for more than 10 years because of concerns over environmental harm to surrounding communities as well as cultural sites.
BLM recognized the “particular concern regarding the withdrawal’s potential impacts” on Navajo allottees and “takes those concerns seriously,” the agency’s principal deputy director, Nada Wolff Culver, said. BLM’s analysis showed the withdrawal would have “a relatively small impact” on that group and other non-federal mineral owners, she said.
‘Hard Decision’
The Chaco debate also lays bare the challenge of helping impoverished, traditional energy communities make a transition to alternative sources of income.
“If you are going to take a job or money from somebody, you should have a plan to replace it,” Nygren, the Navajo Nation president, told lawmakers in July.
Allottees receive royalties averaging about $20,000 per year in a “very poor” area, said Delora Hesuse, a Navajo allottee, who testified before the committee. Both Ashland and Nygren said average impacted allottees receive roughly similar amounts annually.
“Many families still do not have electricity or running water. Our elderly rely on this money to feed their grandchildren and livestock. I know for a fact that allottee families have sent their children to school on this royalty money,” Hesuse said.
The focus needs to be on how to “generate sustainable opportunities for economic development and empowerment” while safeguarding Chaco, said Stansbury.
“There are places that are appropriate to be developed,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), whose district includes Chaco. First protected by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 and designated as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site in 1987, Chaco is not one of those places, she said.
That’s why she opposes Crane’s bill, “even though I know it is a hard decision and there are many different voices on it,” Fernandez said.
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