GOP Rep. Dave Joyce proposes to force Biden admin to hold canceled offshore leases

The top House Republican on a panel overseeing the Interior Department DOI introduced an amendment that would force the Biden administration to hold canceled lease sales.

Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, the top GOP member of the House Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee, introduced the amendment during a markup of President Joe Biden's proposed FY 23 budget.

The amendment would require Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to hold three offshore oil and gas lease sales that the White House abruptly canceled in May.

Joyce told Fox News Digital that every day I hear from constituents who are getting hammered by record-high gas prices. Instead of unleashing American resources to help them, the President continues to prevent and disincentivize domestic energy production, cancelling oil and gas leases he supported during the Obama Administration. These failed, hypocritical energy policies are making us more dependent on foreign powers - including our adversaries and those with questionable environmental and human rights track records - and are making prices that are crushing families already strained by rising inflation, he continued.

The measure was introduced by Joyce, which would force the DOI to hold the canceled sales within 30 days of enactment. The federal government's only remaining planned offshore lease sales were planned for Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

In his State of the Union address, President Biden said that instead of relying on foreign supply chains, let's make it in America. Joyce told Fox News that he d sure like to know why the President doesn't believe that should extend to American oil and gas.

The federal government is required to issue every five years a lease under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, and the current offshore leasing program expires Thursday. In May, Haaland pledged to issue a proposed replacement plan that would potentially list future lease sales.

She said during a Senate hearing that as we take this next step, we will follow the science and the law, as we always do. This requires a robust and transparent review process that includes input from states, the public and Tribes to inform decision-making. We take this responsibility seriously without any pre-judgment of the outcome. White House officials have been debating issuing a five-year plan without any new lease sales scheduled, The New York Times reported last week.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order last January 2021 that prevents all new leasing on federal lands and waters. A federal court in the United States blocked the moratorium five months later.

The U.S. drilled more than 1.7 million barrels of oil per day on offshore federal leases in 2021, below levels previously recorded i 2018 and 2019 before the epidemic, according to the Energy Information Administration.