According to the Houston Chronicle, on Tuesday (11/24), Interior Secretary Ken Salazar fired back at oil industry organizations that have recently criticized the Obama administration's federal oil and gas lease sales. The secretary said that the industry, largely through trade groups, is acting "like an arm of a political party" and the recent attacks "have all the poison and assumptions of election-year politics." Salazar essentially said that the tenor of the criticism belies the industry's shared responsibility and that much of land leased is never developed anyway. One of the critics,"a conservative think-tank," the Institute for Energy Research, earlier released a report indicating a sharp drop in federal lease sales during Obama's tenure. However, the director of a "left-leaning" resource development group, attributes the low lease acreage offered thus far to low prices, high supplies, decreased demand and the recent economic apocalypse. Four more federal lease sales are planned to take place before the end of this year. Read more here.
Salazar fights back on lease sales
