dailycaller.com
The Biden administration backtracked on reports that it is resuming the federal oil and gas leasing program in light of a recent appeals court decision.
On Friday, Reuters reported that the Department of the Interior (DOI), the agency tasked with overseeing the leasing program, was planning to resume the previously-delayed program. But a DOI spokesperson pushed back on the report, saying it overstated the administration’s position that it would begin planning the next steps, not that it had already resumed the program.
“The article overstates our next steps (we did not say we were resuming leasing but instead the planning),” Melissa Schwartz, the Interior spokesperson, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.
Schwartz also shared the department’s full statement given to Reuters, laying out its next steps regarding the oil and gas leasing program. Reuters partially quoted the DOI statement.
