Feds holding back $100 million in drill leases

The AP reports:

the federal government is holding a boatload of money for leases it auctioned and sold but hasn't issued, holding them back for bureaucratic review because of environmental protests and lawsuits. The backlog grew exponentially under the administration of President George W. Bush as it pushed for more domestic drilling.

The Associated Press has calculated that the government is sitting on close to $100 million that was paid for millions of acres of energy leases in the Rocky Mountains that have been withheld for as long as seven years, according to records and interviews with BLM officials in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.

Drillers are steamed by the process. They don't understand why the federal government is sitting on such an enormous sum of money, especially at a time when politicians Washington are so focused on spending stimulus money to revive the economy.

"It's just crazy that the government because of bureaucratic delays is sitting on that kind of money," said Kathleen Sgamma, government affairs director for the Denver-based Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States. "Talk about an economic stimulus."

Some people don't mind higher oil prices.