Editorial: Long-term thinking about energy requires a five-year leasing plan from Biden

What’s the trouble with oil and gas? With record profitability, companies are under pressure to keep the good times rolling for investors.

And the United States government, one of the great beneficiaries from taxes and royalties in energy production, is an impediment to its nation’s energy future.

Because, like newer sustainable energy sources which the nation also needs, it takes a long time and investment by the private sector to develop any power. That means long-term thinking by the U.S. government on permits and leasing. President Joe Biden’s administration is providing little of what is needed.

After 18 months, and despite decades of precedent, the anti-oil Department of the Interior has failed to produce the normal five-year offshore leasing plan for future oil drilling.

We agree with Steve Scalise, the congressman from Jefferson Parish and majority leader of the U.S. House: “This administration holds no regard for its legal obligation to produce a five-year leasing plan, something that no other administration, Republican or Democrat, has failed to do.”

And this stalling comes as warnings are showing up about the fecundity of great oil fields in Texas’ Permian Basin, where many wells are not coming in as lavishly as in previous years.

That doesn’t mean the oil is drying up, but, as The Wall Street Journal reported, it might well require that companies invest more in harder-to-get pools of oil accessed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Alarmism about oil and gas production, particularly the latter vital to cleaner energy generation for electricity, is not yet justified. Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale is a bit more expensive to drill than much of the Permian, so the renewed production in the Bayou State might well be more financially lucrative. And more drilling in the Arctic is expensive, but at least that has been approved by Biden’s administration.

But oil and gas production can’t be turned on with a switch. The long-term reliability of leasing plans is vital to financing energy development for the United States.