DORGAN ASKS INTERIOR DEPARTMENT FOR "ONE-STOP SHOP" AT FT. BERTHOLD TO EXPEDITE OIL, GAS LEASING
Friday, October 17, 2008
CONTACT: Justin Kitsch
or Brenden Timpe
PHONE: 202-224-2551
(BISMARCK, N.D.) --- U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asked the Department of Interior on Friday to establish an “Oil and Gas One-Stop Shop” on the Fort Berthold reservation to expedite leasing and issuing of permits for oil and gas development of reservation lands.
The Ft. Berthold reservation sits on top of the Bakken Shale Oil Formation, the nation’s most promising oil and gas field. It has estimated reserves of nearly four billion barrels of oil. Yet, only 2 wells are currently producing on the reservation. Cutting through a complicated Department of Interior bureaucracy appears to be the biggest road block to getting necessary permits and leases issued, and development underway, Dorgan said.
Dorgan made his request Friday in a letter sent to George Skibine, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Economic Development for Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior.
Dorgan’s proposal calls for the Department of Interior to establish one office, to be located at the local Ft. Berthold Agency Office, to house -- under one roof -- officials from the four federal agencies involved in approving oil and gas development permits and leases on Indian lands.
A report issued by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which Dorgan chairs, cited a 49-step approval process required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for oil and gas permits and leases on Indian lands. Four separate agencies – the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Minerals Management Service, and the Office of the Special Trustee – are involved in that process, the report said.
“Our nation urgently needs to produce more oil here at home and the Ft. Berthold community has an urgent need for the economic development oil and gas production would bring,” Dorgan said Friday. “There is no reason to allow a lot of red tape and a scattered bureaucracy to continue to cause these delays.”
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