Why You Need the Internet to Drill in the U.S.

The Obama administration largely put an end to old-school federal energy auctions last year, just when they were starting to get interesting.

Those barker-and-gavel sessions, long the primary way the Bureau of Land Management sold leasing rights for oil and gas drilling on federal property, had become targets for climate activists. A year ago, a conservationist worried about drilling near her home in Utah paid $2,500 for the rights to 1,120 acres of federal land. (She put the purchase on a credit card.) The BLM rescinded the lease months later after she’d made it clear she didn’t intend to drill.