We don't need to give them an incentive. We simply need to get out of their way. That's it. You don't need to give a businessman man a reason to do business... it's what he does. The problem is... our wonderful federal government has gotten in the way.
That said, clearly, yes. You are right, the government needs to either, sell the land completely (what i prefer), or write the leases in such a way that it makes good economic sense, with low risk.
Just think about it. The claim is that it requires roughly 5 years to go from exploration to drilling to well producing oil. So, if I offered you the option to lease a 2 acer plot of land to build a house on, that may cost you $250K to build, take 5 years to build, and you lose it all in 10 years... would you do it? Would anyone? Of course not. So this obviously is an issue.
Now granted, there is a reason to lease the lands though. Do you realize how much money the federal government is raking in on leased land? Lease land that isn't being used! Which is why I disagree with the whole thing. The federal government shouldn't be owning land. It should be sold to the public. If the states want to buy it, that's their deal. But there is nothing in our constitution about the federal government being in the real estate business.
I happen to find an article on this, and in that article, a letter from Senator Ernest Ishtook of Oklahoma. In it he states the following reasons that a company may not use a land lease.
1. A company may lease a plot, but never get the funds to properly explore or drill it.
2. A company may find after exploration tests like seismic, that the cost of the lease isn't worth the cost of drilling.
3. A company may hold the lease until such a time as the cost of oil rises till it's profitable, or new technologies allow economic drilling.
4. A company may purchase multiple tracts, and focus on one with given capital, and wait for the others in turn.
5. A company (this is shocking) might be blocked by government red tape, both federal and state, and/or lawsuits by eco-nuts (my wording here
)
6. Finely, and most important, the federal government is pretty much selling drilling leases for random federal lands. There is not the slightest chance that all the acres have enough oil to be profitable, and in many cases, any oil at all.
So on the federal lands we know without question there is tons, if not trillions of barrels of oil, they are not leasing a single acre. But on a random plot of federal land in Idaho, sign up to purchase drilling rights. Then we whine they are not drilling?
