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The Interior Department has quietly ended its controversial guidance on handing out COVID-related royalty cuts to oil and gas companies drilling American public lands. The change, which was first noticed by the Center for Western Priorities, was confirmed by the department in a statement to E&E News.
It's still unclear how many companies got royalty cuts—Interior hasn't released any data from New Mexico, the state with the most federal oil and gas production.
CWP's Policy Director Jesse Prentice-Dunn noted that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt "used the COVID pandemic as an excuse to give favors to the oil industry he used to work for. Now it appears his department is quietly trying to sweep this shameful chapter under the rug."
Confirmation of the royalty policy change came as the Bureau of Land Management announced a suite of relaxed regulations for oil and gas producers, granting a long-standing wish of the oil industry, which asked to write its own rules three years ago.
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The problem is they are still applying non scientific criteria to deciding what the best available science is and that's never going to work no matter how many ways you slice it. It just doesn't make sense.”
