From: Hinson, Alex Bcc: lori [email protected] Subject: DOI Daily Report Date: Wednesday, December 20, 2017 9:57:02 AM INTERIOR DAILY COMMUNICATIONS REPORT NEWS TO SHARE: Reuters: U.S. sees foreign reliance for 'critical' minerals as security concern “The United States needs to encourage domestic production of a handful of minerals critical for the technology and defense industries, and stem reliance on China, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Tuesday. Zinke made the remarks at the Interior Department as he unveiled a report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which detailed the extent to which the United States is dependent upon foreign competitors for its supply of certain minerals.” Seattle Times (Associated Press): Interior Dept. says US relies on China for critical minerals “The Interior Department says in a new report that the United States is reliant on China and other nations for the overwhelming majority of critical minerals used by the military and for manufacturing everything from smartphones to wind turbines and cars. The report released Tuesday by the U.S. Geological Survey says the U.S. relies on foreign sources for a majority of all but two of the 23 minerals identified as critical. The minerals are produced in China, Russia, South Africa, Brazil and other countries. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called the report troubling and said the reliance of imported minerals, especially by the military, poses a ‘very real national security risk.’” The Business Times (CO): Colorado gets $92 million in federal disbursements “Colorado received a total of more than $92 million in federal energy and mineral production disbursements, according to figures from the Interior Department for the 2017 fiscal year. The total constitutes an increase of more than $8 million from the previous fiscal year. The funds come from oil, natural gas and minerals extracted from federal and Indian lands. Colorado ranked third for federal revenues for the 2017 fiscal year. Nationwide, Office of Natural Resources Revenue disbursements totaled $7.11 billion, an increase of nearly $1 billion from the previous year.” OTHER TOP STORIES: Washington Post: Rock Creek National Park? Norton wants a new name for nation’s oldest urban park. “The official list of national parks is filled with iconic places: Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, to name a few. Rock Creek Park, which was created by Congress in 1890 and runs through the heart of the nation’s capital, is nowhere on that list. Instead, the National Park Service has relegated Rock Creek to the category of “other designations.” D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) wants to change that. Norton is asking Congress to rename it “Rock Creek National Park,” which would move the country’s oldest urban park into the big leagues, where she says it belongs. Redesignating and renaming the park would make its historical significance clear to visitors and members of Congress, Norton said. And that might help her when she lobbies for funding to maintain the park, which has a nearly $53 million maintenance backlog.” Bloomberg: Tax Bill Opens Arctic Refuge for Oil, But Years of Delay May Follow “Congress is close to lifting a 40-year-old ban on energy development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but drilling for oil in that frozen wilderness may still be years away as the effort faces exhaustive environmental reviews and likely lawsuits. It could be a decade or more before any well is drilled, following required environmental scrutiny and permit reviews -- and then the inevitable lawsuits from local communities and environmental groups opposed to any development in that rugged wilderness. "It’s still an open question about whether drilling will ever happen there," said Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former Interior Department official. "It’s hard to image that drilling will occur in the next 10 years -- or ever." The House voted Tuesday for a tax bill that includes a provision mandating that the Interior Department hold lease sales in the so-called 1002 area of the Arctic Refuge, a coastal portion of the 19-million-acre federally protected wilderness area. The refuge is estimated to contain 11.8 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude.” U.S. News and World Report: Official: North Cascades Grizzly Bear Recovery Work Halted “Work to restore grizzly bears to the North Cascades Ecosystem has been stopped by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's office, a national parks official told a Montana newspaper. But Zinke spokeswoman Heather Swift told The Associated Press Tuesday that Zinke did not direct a stop work order on the environmental review. Swift didn't provide further details. North Cascades National Park Superintendent Karen Taylor-Goodrich told the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee last week that her staff had been asked to halt work on its environmental review, the Missoulian reported . She said the order also stalls discussions with Canadian wildlife managers who oversee a similar grizzly recovery process in British Columbia.” ### -- Alex Hinson Deputy Press Secretary Department of the Interior From: Hinson, Alex Bcc: lori [email protected] Subject: DOI Daily Report Date: Wednesday, December 27, 2017 9:59:24 AM INTERIOR DAILY COMMUNICATIONS REPORT NEWS TO SHARE: Natural gas Intelligence: New Interior Survey Shows Huge Increase in Alaska Onshore, Offshore Reserves “Alaska's onshore and offshore collectively hold about 17.6 billion bbl of oil and more than 50 Tcf of natural gas, according to an updated assessment conducted by Department of Interior (DOI) agencies, which also reported a nearly six-fold increase in onshore oil resources. The DOI last week said the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was the lead agency for the survey of onshore areas, while its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) led the offshore survey, with data contributed by its Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The USGS estimated that the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), as well as adjacent state and native lands, hold an estimated mean of 8.7 billion bbl of oil and 25 Tcf of natural gas, resources which were classified as undiscovered, technically recoverable. The latest survey marked a near six-fold increase in oil from a previous assessment conducted in 2010, which found a mean of 1.5 billion bbl.” Guam Daily Post: DOI awards $1.5M for new playgrounds at island schools “Thousands of the island’s elementary and middle school students received a Christmas gift from the Department of Interior as the Calvo administration announced securing a $1.5 million grant. The funds will be used to purchase new playground and gym equipment and improve multipurpose courts and fields. Gov. Eddie Baza Calvo stated that playtime is crucial to fostering creativity in children. “On playgrounds, children run, swing, and climb – strengthening their bodies. They play together and learn how to take turns, how to follow and lead their peers. These are life skills that strengthen their character and build them up to be the forward thinkers of our island,” Calvo stated in a press release. Roughly $1.3 million will go to fund elementary school playground upgrades, while $200,000 will go to middle schools for field improvements and equipment.” Washington Examiner: Rob Bishop: Congress must cement Trump's public lands agenda into law “Rep. Rob Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, says he's thrilled to finally be working with a president who supports the idea of returning the control of federal land to states and localities. But in an interview with the Washington Examiner, he said Congress needs to work quickly to make sure President Trump's decisions to roll back national monument designations are locked into place, so a future president can't reverse those moves. "What they are doing has go to be put into some type of statutory language to actually give some finality to it," Bishop said. "Otherwise, everything Trump is doing now can be changed by the next president." Bishop said the issue is a challenge, however, because he argues that environmentalists and other opponents are misrepresenting the intent of the monument reforms, and the broader Trump public lands agenda.” Albuquerque Journal: Zinke undaunted after busy, divisive 2017 “On his first day on the job – clad in jeans and a black cowboy hat – Zinke rode a U.S. Park Police horse to his swearing-in. He continued to make splashy news throughout the year, whether it was for his plans to reorganize the Interior Department and slash its workforce by as many as 4,000 employees, his stated intent to open more federal lands to both oil drilling and recreation, or his admonishing a national park superintendent for tweets about climate change. No issue loomed larger in the interior secretary’s first year in office than his contentious and controversial review of 27 national monuments for possible downsizing or other changes. Two of those monuments – Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument near Las Cruces and Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos – became a national rallying cry for land conservationists. Zinke spent two days in New Mexico in late July meeting with public officials and others, and even took a horseback ride with the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators. Despite intense public skepticism about his intentions, Zinke recommended no changes to the monuments’ boundaries in New Mexico – only management changes.” OTHER TOP STORIES: Wall Street Journal: Regulators Propose Rollbacks to Offshore Drilling Safety Measures “Regulators in the Trump administration are proposing to roll back safety measures put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a revision that would reduce the role of government in offshore oil production and return more responsibility to private companies.