Photographer: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images President Joe Biden’s administration is dramatically curtailing U.S. public land available for new oil and gas development as it restarts leasing with new environmental protections. The shift is part of a Bureau of Land Management plan to resume selling drilling rights on government-managed federal lands concentrated in the western U.S. When the government holds those auctions, expected later this year, roughly 80% less land will be available for oil and gas leasing, the Interior Department said. Energy companies also will be forced to pay higher royalties for the oil and gas they extract from the newly leased land. The changes, which would ultimately boost the cost of oil and gas development on federal lands, could clash with Biden’s efforts to tame persistently high gasoline prices by releasing crude from the nation’s emergency stockpile and authorizing wider summertime sales of a cheaper higher-ethanol fuel. “For too […]