House Natural Resources subcommittee to sharpen focus on environmental reviews

The House Natural Resources committee will devote more attention to environmental reviews and their effects on advancing energy development in a new subcommittee next Congress.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evaluations will now be wrapped into the newly formed subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation.

Currently called the subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) will remain its chairman.

“Moving jurisdiction of NEPA to a specific Subcommittee will allow us to better review and address how this law is being implemented and the impacts its bureaucratic red-tape has on jobs, our economy and access to public lands and resources,” Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said in a Thursday statement.

The House Natural Resources Committee, which deals with energy development on federal lands, has pushed the Obama administration to expand oil-and-gas drilling. All applications for such drilling projects must go through a NEPA assessment.

The committee announced all of its other subcommittee chairmen would retain their posts next Congress.

Those subcommittee chairmen are: Energy and Mineral Resources Chairman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.); Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs Chairman John Fleming (R-La.); Indian and Alaska Native Affairs Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska); and Water and Power Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.).

---