The federal government is relying on economic predictions heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry as justification for its proposed offshore drilling program.

That’s according to a report from the Public Accountability Initiative.

The program, formally announced in March 2016 in a 279-page publication by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), controversially proposes leasing areas of the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean for oil and gas drilling, citing “increased wages, additional jobs, increased tax collection, revenue sharing, and proximity of supply and consumers economic” as its economic rationale.

The Bureau’s economic analysis appears to be overwhelmingly derived from reports either funded by the oil and gas industry itself or by think tanks, consulting firms, and dark money advocacy groups that draw money and leadership from the petroleum industry.

The government’s reliance on industry-tied reports as the justification for a contentious drilling proposal is a continuation of a trend by which the oil and gas industry and its allies have funded and advanced flawed and misleading research promoting drilling as environmentally safe and economically beneficial.

The Public Accountability Initiative has played a leading role in exposing this trend.

Such studies, which tend not to be peer-reviewed often rely on flawed assumptions and easily-manipulated computer models that can produce overly optimistic results.

Of the nine studies named in the economic analysis portion of the proposal, all but one came from industry-tied sources, nearly half were directly funded by oil and gas companies or lobbying organizations, and none had been subject to peer review.