While trade groups for the oil and gas industry and Obama administration officials accuse each other of playing politics, sales of oil and gas leases on public lands continue to take place, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar says.

The sales have been occurring in accord with a developing comprehensive energy strategy that includes conventional resources such as oil and gas, as well as renewable resources, according to Salazar.

“Our oil and gas leasing program is robust, but balanced,” Salazar said in a news conference on Nov. 24. “It focuses on development in the right way, in the right places, and with a fair return to the American taxpayer.... Trade groups for the oil and gas industry need to understand that they don’t own the nation’s public lands, taxpayers do.”

But representatives of the oil and gas industry took issue with Salazar’s position.

“Other nations are doing everything in their power to increase their oil and gas production, while this administration seems to be taking every step it can to reduce future U.S. oil and gas supplies,” said Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute.

Salazar said oil and gas industry trade groups utilize untruths and launch attacks “that have all the poison and deception of an election year.... Shareholders didn’t sign up to have their company’s trade association behave like an arm of a political party.”

The political barbs came to a head in late November after the Bureau of Land Management offered only 20 parcels, totaling 28,549 acres, for lease in areas under the management of three BLM-Utah Field Offices – Moab, Price, and Vernal.

Only five of those parcels were sold. The Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States blamed “politics” for the low sales.

A study released by IPAMS accused the Obama administration of “circumventing” the BLM’s public planning process that created resource management plans for the three areas. The RMPs, it argues, not only justified the sales but also assured “aggressive environmental protections,” according to a press release from IPAMS.

“We believe that industry deserves greater certainty when they go into a lease auction,” Salazar said. “They should never be given the false promise of a lease parcel next to a national park. The American people don’t want that. And industry shouldn’t want that.”

Salazar then invited oil and gas companies “to engage with us and to be partners in our energy future.”

“We were very encouraged to hear that Secretary Salazar believes ‘...it is important for the oil-and-gas industry to have certainty,’” IPAMS stated in a news release responding to Salazar. “We look forward to meeting with Department of Interior to explore ideas about how America can more responsibly develop its federal energy resources.”

Salazar noted that BLM will hold 38 lease auctions next year, including some for the first time in two years in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. In 2009, 31 lease sales were held, he said.

All of these sales are “onshore,” they do not count off-shore activity, according to Salazar.

He noted that the there are 53,585 active leases onshore, but 26,000 of them are not producing. “And yet we continue to make more of our public domain available for oil and gas development,” he said.

Bob Abbey, the director of BLM, addressed economics at the same news conference, noting that natural gas prices have dropped to $3.75 per BTU from $10 in 2008. Oil prices have dropped from $130 per barrel to around $75, he said.

“The inventory and leases that are not producing, which is already high, may yet go higher as long as oil and gas prices remain where they are,” Abbey said.