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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday the agency is canceling oil and gas lease sales for the second quarter, drawing criticism from Wyoming’s governor.
The announcement marks the second quarter in a row that the agency, which manages energy development, recreation, grazing and conservation on 245 million federal acres, halted lease sales after President Joe Biden signed an executive order in January that included a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands. 
The BLM cited the U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) ongoing review of the federal oil and gas leasing program for why the lease sales, which is required quarterly under the Mineral Leasing Act, aren’t being held. 
“This decision does not impact existing operations or permits for valid, existing leases, which continue to be reviewed and approved,” the agency said.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon called the BLM announcement “disappointing, disheartening and not surprising.
“What is most disappointing is that the Department of Interior could have chosen to review the federal oil and gas leasing program while conducting quarterly sales,” Gordon added in a statement. “Instead they chose to tighten the financial choke of revenue that would normally flow to the state from lease sales, all the while refraining from consulting with the very states and communities that are directly impacted by these decisions.”
Wyoming filed a lawsuit last month over the lease moratorium. Meanwhile, 13 other states also filed suit in Louisiana.
States with significant oil and gas development say they have lost out on revenue under the lease moratorium.
Gordon said Wyoming brings in $35 million a year on average from the lease sales. 
“This year, we have received zero, because the first and second quarter lease sales have been indefinitely postponed,” the Republican said.
The Petroleum Association of Wyoming (PAW) and the Colorado-based trade group Western Energy Alliance are also challenging the executive order in court. 
Taxpayers for Common Sense, which argues royalty rates on production are outdated, welcomed the BLM’s announcement.
“Holding more lease sales now would mean locking in these money-losing terms for developing federal resources,” said Autumn Hanna, the group’s vice president. “The better option is to let the review run its course, reform the oil and gas program by ditching outdated terms and updating rules, and fix the broken policies of the past.”

BATON ROUGE -- A resolution to add the COVID-19 vaccine to LSU’s list of mandatory immunizations for students returning to campus this fall passed the LSU Faculty Senate 52-1 Thursday.
Inessa Bazayev, one of the professors who proposed the resolution, said 140 LSU faculty members had signed on to it out of concern about the potential health risks for them and their students.
Bazayev, an associate professor of music theory, said the resolution “prioritizes students’ safety by requiring students to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 prior to the start to fall 2021, given that LSU was planning on a return to face-to-face instruction in the fall, including for large classes.”
Professor Roger Laine, a biological sciences professor, voiced his wholehearted support, saying he was “unwilling to get into a room where my 35 students are not vaccinated.”
Political Science Professor Daniel Tirone said that LSU is scheduling classes at 100% of classroom capacity.
“So it is obvious that the intention is that they’re going to have every seat filled to the extent that they can, but it is not clear that they’re going to maintain the current mitigation measures,” he said. “And so that, I think, only enforces the need for the vaccine requirement.”
The nearly unanimous vote came after LSU’s interim president, Tom Galligan, and University of Louisiana System President Dr. Jim Henderson announced this week that they did not plan to require the more than 125,000 students at their schools to get the vaccine before returning for in-person classes in the fall.
More than 70 universities across the country have said they will require the vaccine, a point continually brought up by LSU professors at Thursday’s meeting. A recent survey indicated that about a third of Louisiana residents do not plan to take the vaccine, raising fears among the professors that a similar percentage of students might return from summer vacation without it.
“I think it’s really important that all the students be vaccinated, and these other major universities have already done this, so I 100 percent support this,” said Laine.
“More institutions join this reasonable and responsible movement every day,” Bazayev said.
The University of California and the California State University systems were among the latest to announce vaccination plans. They said Thursday that they intend to require vaccines for the 1 million students and employees of their 33 campuses once the federal Food and Drug Administration formally approves the vaccines.
Galligan and Henderson have said their campuses cannot require students to be vaccinated because the FDA has only approved the COVID vaccine for emergency use and has not completed its full safety investigations. But other universities have said that the health risks and the possibility of additional COVID-19 variants warrant vaccine requirements.
Legal experts have said the issue is likely to be settled in courts.
Professor Meredith Veldman, an associate professor of history at LSU, said at the Faculty Senate meeting that she had received 79 emails about the resolution faculty members, with 76 supporting a vaccine requirement.
Galligan and Henderson have said they are strongly encouraging all students and employees to get the vaccine and that they will use other measures, like mask mandates and social distancing, if needed to protect their campuses. LSU has already vaccinated 10,000 of its more than 35,000 students and employees, Galligan said.
“What if the governor removes the mask mandate this summer?” Veldman asked, referring to a statewide mask mandate imposed by Gov. John Bel Edwards. “Will LSU feel they must remove the mask mandate in classrooms that are at 100% capacity with unvaccinated students?”
Leaders of the state Legislature have said there is little chance that lawmakers will require students to take vaccines. Galligan has noted the Louisiana Department of Health has not required them.
Daniel Tirone, a political science professor, said he found very little legislation relevant to universities’ ability and duty to require immunizations.
“The only requirement there is actually for meningococcal disease, so we already go beyond what is statutorily required,” Tirone said. “So, it does not seem like we’d be making this up out of whole cloth to add this COVID-19 requirement to the current policy statement.”
Galligan and Henderson said this week that they are reviewing how to accommodate faculty members who ask to teach online rather than returning to in-person classes this fall.
Henderson said administrators will consider age, medical conditions and family health concerns, along with the latest public health guidance, in making the decisions on a case-by-case basis.

AUDITIONS
The Children’s Theatre of Morgan City auditions set 3-6 p.m. Friday, May 14, at Morgan City Municipal Auditorium for children age 7 year (by audition date) to 18 (or the summer before their senior year, whichever comes first). Cost: $50 per child (payment due at auditions) along with a separate check for $90 (returned once chaperone duties are complete). All new students must bring a copy of their birth certificate. Practice begins Friday, June 4. Production dates: Friday, June 25 and Sunday, June 27. For info email: ctofmc@yahoo.com.

In the spring 1850, Daniel Dennett, editor of The Planters’ Banner in Franklin, took the steamboat Rio Grande to New Orleans and afterwards paid it a complement in his newspaper.
“The Rio Grande is well regulated, well managed, and those who go on her are well fed,” he wrote.
That was OK, and he should have stopped right there.
His mistake was that he inserted what he considered a bit of levity: “We have not a word of fault to find with her; but we intend to brand with infamy a few interloping bed-bugs that are allowed to take passage on her, without paying for it. As they are the only nuisances that we discovered on that excellent boat, we think they should be taxed ... or invited to quit the premises.”
That raised a howl from J. J. Laburthe, the boat’s captain, who threatened a lawsuit, and also a response signed by 22 Rio Grande passengers who testified that “this boat commanded our entire approbation, both in respect to the conduct of the officers, and to the general condition of the cabins” and that “as to the bed-bugs lately alluded to by the editor of the ‘Planters’ Banner,’ we can safely assert that none disturbed our repose, nor did we discover the traces of any whatsoever.”
That was their mistake. They should have let sleeping bed-bugs slumber.
An old adage reminds us that in those days it was seldom profitable to argue with someone who bought ink by the barrel-full, especially someone like Dennett who knew how to have fun with his pen and printing press.
“We were not aware that a few interloping bed-bugs were more derogatory to the character of a steamboat than the same number of fleas or cockroaches,” he responded in the next edition of his paper. “As to the Rio Grande, we did not complain that it was at all serious, but even a pair of bed-bugs on these waters are so great a curiosity that an editor would be inexcusable were he not to give them a respectful notice.
“Besides, one would think that one might make an attack upon the character of one of these hide nippers without being blamed, for no jury could estimate the character of a bed-bug at more than a dime or two, and that, if recovered, would hardly be worth the trouble of a law suit.”
Pity the poor editor, he said. “He is expected to notice and publish almost all passing events, and still if he treats even a whiskey barrel or a pair of imported bed-bugs with levity, he is woefully grumbled at.”
The gentlemen who signed on to the defense of the boat “may be good judges of law, medicine, or dry goods,” he continued, “but with all due deference ... we must insist that they are not judges of bed-bugs, for if ... they searched their state rooms in quest of these little intruders, it shows that they don’t understand the nature of the animals. Had they been raised in a bed-bug country, they would have known that the little fellows in the daytime are already stowed away in the crevices, and never show their peepers in daylight.”
Dennett wished “the captain and his boat well,” but said he was “unable to retract one word of what we said in the article referred to by the Committee on Nippers.”
“We took passage on [the Rio Grande] once, and should be pleased to do so again,” he wrote. “We [still] insist that the Rio Grande is a first-rate boat, and in our opinion the officers perform their duty admirably. So for the present we bid the Rio Grande adieu.”
The boat’s advertisement disappeared from the newspaper for a month or two, but there seemed to have been no legal action.
If the editor rode the Rio Grande again on one of his regular trips to the city, he made no mention of it, in jest or otherwise. Bed-bugs probably continued to get a free ride on Laburthe’s boat and every other steamer that plied Louisiana’s bayous and rivers.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.