The Interior Department kicked off a major rulemaking today that
would update fees oil and gas companies pay to drill on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management published an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking
(ANPR) that requests public comment on potential changes to oil and gas
royalty rates, rental payments, lease sale minimum bids, civil penalty
caps and financial assurances.
The public has 45 days to weigh in. The ANPR asks the public to suggest how BLM should craft a rule, but it is not a regulation in itself. Updates to BLM's royalty rate structure would offer the agency
important flexibility at a time when oil production has risen on public
lands in each of the past six years, Jewell said. Conservation groups have supported higher fees to produce and
maintain leases on public lands. Roughly half of those revenues go to
the U.S. Treasury, with the rest going to the states where drilling
occurs. But today's move will generate blowback from energy companies that
argue they already pay more to operate on federal lands due to longer
permitting times and the persistent threat of lawsuits from
environmental groups...more
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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