'How Many Acres Of Public Land Do You Need For Oil?' Rep. Katie Porter Asks Executives

LAKE FOREST, CA — If a single grain of rice can tip the scale between victory and defeat, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) had a minivan full.

Porter backed her minivan up to her latest Zoom interview this week of oil executives at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's hearing and compared the acreage held in public land leases not to one grain of rice but to 479 pounds of it.

"Fossil Fuel companies are sitting on 13.9 million acres of our federal land they aren't even using, and they want more," Porter tweeted after the meeting.

If each grain of rice was an acre, it would amount to more than 479 pounds of rice, or enough large bags to weigh down the back of her minivan.

Porter addressed the oil executives at the House Oversight Committee's hearing involving the oil industry, appearing over Zoom in her carport. She asked the American Petroleum Institute's Mike Sommers about the oil industry's need for more access to public land to pursue oil and gas production, questioning how much of America's public land is enough for Big Oil.

Porter said that the industry has gathered as much public land acreage as the acreage of New Jersey and Maryland combined.

Porter quoted Sommers.

"Banning federal leasing on federal lands and waters would derail decades of United States Energy progress."

She asked, "How many of those acres are currently unused?"

Sommers attempted to suggest that Porter had a "fundamental misunderstanding" on how long it took to prepare the land for oil usage.

She reclaimed her time to tell him what she already knew.

"There are 7,700 unused permits," she said.

Other questions she asked: How many acres are already leased by fossil fuel companies are unused and available? Do you support a pause on new federal oil and gas leases?

In Porter's math there are 13.9 million acres of unused leased land. She compared the price paid for that land to "making the Louisiana Purchase look like a rip-off, and you're not even using it. What more do you need?"

"Our public land belongs to the American people," Porter said. "Not to Big Oil. When you lobby and sue to take more of our land, you are saying that too much is never enough. The American people are tired of this charade."