Obama admin allows online auctions for big oil companies to frack public lands - starting at $2 per acre

Tuesday, October 18, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: fracking, public land, climate change

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(NaturalNews) The term "climate change" is something the Obama Administration likes to repeat, but only to manipulate you into believing that the government cares about the environment. When it comes down to doing business, big oil companies run the show and use the government as a way to rapidly take advantage of public lands, while discarding a toxic slurry of fracking chemicals into the water that we all drink.

In fact, under the Obama Administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been setting up auctions that allow fossil fuel companies to bid on public land for as little as $2 an acre, so that they can rapidly frack entire regions of the country. This is how the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania became a hot spot for fracking in recent years; the federal government was cheaply auctioning off the rights to frack there.

Bureau of Land Management circumvents protests by moving the public land fracking auctions online

For years, the BLM conducted the auctions in person. As the people of the United States began to learn more about the dangers of fracking and how this controversial method of drilling with chemicals poisons the land, air and water, however, activists started getting involved to peacefully protest these auctions. In the past year, nine out of 15 BLM-led auctions have been cancelled or postponed due to mounting public pressure. The very government that advertises climate change and promises environmental protection, is the entity selling off public land, only to have it polluted nonstop by the big oil companies.

Back in May, in Lakewood, Colorado, activists blocked the entrance to a Holiday Inn where an auction was taking place. Later in the summer, activists gathered outside the New Orleans Mercedes-Benz Superdome and rallied to protest a lease sale. Not being heard, activists made their way into the Department of the Interior building in Washington, DC. While striking to demand no new fossil fuel fracking leases, 13 activists were arrested.

And now that the keep-it-in-the-ground protests have become too much of a nuisance, the BLM have decided to move the auctions online. The right to assemble and speak out against these abuses can be completely ignored, as the government moves the bidding to the worldwide web. Currently, the BLM are putting 4,000 acres of public land up for auction across Missouri and Kansas.

Obama Administration quickly selling public land to fracking industry

The Obama Administration is like a pimp allowing the United States to be sold and exploited like a cheap whore. The federal BLM maintains a facade of public land stewardship, only to use it to gut the United States' natural resources.

The fossil fuel executives are laughing all the way to the bank, as they seize the public lands cheaply and drill into them with nasty chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency turns a blind eye to the dirty water and polluted air crisis that this fracking industry is expediting through the government departments.

Currently, the BLM is using a company called EnergyNet to sell the public land online. For years, EnergyNet has auctioned off private land to oil and gas companies, but this is the first time they have engaged in selling public lands for oil and gas exploitation on behalf of the government. EnergyNet presents fossil fuel reps with a simple 8-step bidding process to acquire land for fracking from as little as $2 an acre. As U.S. public land is sold away cheaply to the predatory fracking industry, the people will be left dealing with the effects of the displaced heavy metals and toxic slurry of chemicals that are discarded in the water and soil.

Sources include:

EcoWatch.com

Convio.net (Greenpeace)