By TOM FOWLER Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 24, 2009, 9:55PM

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar fired back at critics of the federal government's oil and gas leasing program on Tuesday, saying the oil industry was acting “like an arm of a political party.”

In a conference call with reporters to announce oil and gas lease sales on federal land for 2010, Salazar said the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas leasing program this year has been “robust,” putting more than 2.7 million acres of land up for lease and generating $126 million in revenue. Four more leases are planned before year's end.

“But you wouldn't know it if you listened to the untruths coming out” of industry groups, Salazar said. “Trade groups for the oil and gas industry repeatedly launch attacks that have all the poison and assumptions of election-year politics.”

Salazar said enery company shareholders have two choices: let their companies sign on to industry efforts that “act like an arm of a political party,” or “engage constructively to find common-sense solutions” to improving the leasing process.

The verbal barrage was aimed at groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which has been critical of a number of moves taken by the Obama administration, including rescinding 77,000 acres of lease sales done late in the Bush administration and recommending shorter terms for future leases. API President Jack Gerard said in a statement Tuesday the group appreciates “the already anticipated lease sale announcement for 2010,” but that the oil and natural gas industry “which supports 9.2 million American jobs, believes more can be done to expand the economy and create new jobs.”

“We want to be part of the solution and a constructive partner in a comprehensive energy policy that could create over a hundred thousand new jobs, and we are ready to meet with Secretary Salazar to help advance our shared objectives,” Gerard said.

Other groups have criticized the federal government's lease program in the past year.

The Institute for Energy Research, a conservative think tank in Houston, did a study comparing government lease sale activities going back to 1989 showing less onshore acreage was offered for sale in 2009 than any other year.

Lease sales last year topped $10 billion, versus the $126 million so far this year, the group said.

But Salazar said in the call that the majority of leased land is never tapped by oil and gas drillers.

And Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for the left-leaning Western Resource Advocates, said in a statement that the historically low price of natural gas, a lack of investment capital, the recession and ample natural gas supplies from new fields are a bigger contributor to the smaller lease sale totals.

The Bureau of Land Management didn't say how many acres will be covered in the 37 planned oil and natural gas lease sales next year.

The bureau's Alaska oil and gas lease sale, scheduled for Aug. 11, will offer tracts in part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area to the west of the massive Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

tom.fowler@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/6738095.html