When it announced its contingency plans for the shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management said staff members in charge of processing leases and permits for oil and gas, leases for coal or "other energy and mineral resources necessary for energy production" would still have to work.
Since that time, it has continued to approve drilling permits. Between Oct. 1 and Wednesday, the bureau approved 474 permits to drill on public lands.
That figure is fairly in line with previous months when the government was open, with 494 permits approved in August and 505 in September.
Interior Secretary Burgum said during a recent event that the administration is scrounging up funding wherever it can to pay people for activities such as approving permits.
"Whether it's a an entrance fee at a park, I've got nobody out there to collect that, whether it's getting permits done, we're grabbing any cash that was laying in any drawer to try to pay those essential people, including the people that can do the permitting, so that we can keep going," Burgum said last week during an event at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Interior Department spokesperson Kristen Peters said in an email that drilling permits were being processed "using associated filing fees."
She added that the Bureau of Land Management "collects a non-refundable processing fee when an oil and gas operator submits" a permit application.
At the same time, Burgum mused that the government may also consider further layoffs as a result of the funding lapse. The Trump administration has broadly sought to lay off workers and shrink the size of the government, though mid-shutdown reductions in force have been halted by the courts.
"What all of us are doing in the Cabinet is taking a hard look at, 'Wow, maybe we actually don't need all of these resources,'" Burgum said while criticizing Democrats amid the ongoing shutdown.
"So maybe they're actually helping us get to the point where we can say, 'We don't need as many people; we don't need as much cost.'"
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's plan, states that it will have employees available "to work on priority conventional energy projects." The term "conventional energy" typically refers to fossil fuels.
These priority projects include preparing the administration's plan for offshore drilling for the years ahead, as well as "preparation for the anticipated calendar year 2026 offshore critical mineral lease sales and oil and gas development plans."
Read more at TheHill.com.
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