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After two day-long hearings, the House Natural Resources Committee has passed a portion of President Biden's Build Back Better Act containing a number of long-overdue reforms to ensure the American people get a fair return from oil, gas, and mining companies that operate on public lands.
The bill, as approved by the committee yesterday, would raise royalty rates on oil extracted from public lands and extend those royalties to methane emissions, holding companies responsible for wasting one of the most potent greenhouse gases. It would also strengthen bonding requirements, making it harder for companies to abandon oil wells, which saddles taxpayers with the cleanup costs. The bill also ends the practice of noncompetitive leasing, which allows oil companies to lock up public lands for pennies a year.
“Congress is doing its job; now the Biden administration needs to step up and release its report on oil and gas leasing," said Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss. "Fixing the fiscal problems with the system is a strong first step, but there are many more changes that need to happen at the Interior Department, and the clock is ticking.”
Why do Utah county commissioners want to build a road to nowhere?
The so-called Book Cliffs Highway would cut through a remote area of Grand County, Utah—just north of Moab—would cost upward of $200 million to build, would bisect elk, antelope and mule deer habitat, and would serve no discernible purpose, according to two Grand County commissioners and the mayor of Moab, who all oppose the project.
The highway’s proponents are a group of rural county commissioners who say it would help tourists get from Dinosaur National Monument to Moab, but the road wouldn't actually make the trip any shorter.
So why do they actually want to build the highway? The most obvious answer is to help energy producers move tar sands out of the Uintah Basin, a remote, fossil fuel-rich area near Dinosaur National Monument. That was the stated purpose of the road when it was first proposed in the 1980s.
The group of commissioners has already sunk $500,000 into planning the highway—likely illegally. The money came from Utah’s federal oil and gas royalties, which are supposed to fund projects that offset the effects of drilling on local communities, under federal law.
The Book Cliffs Highway is just one example of misuse of oil and gas royalties in Utah. A report published last month found that over $109 million in federal royalty money has been spent on projects that promote or expand fossil fuel extraction since 2009.
Utah lawmakers need to stop allowing federal royalties to be funneled into projects that only serve oil and gas companies and exacerbate the climate crisis already wreaking havoc on the West.
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Even the slimmest possibility of fossil fuel leasing within the boundaries of Bears Ears or Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments should be unthinkable, as leasing these nominated parcels or any other parcels within these monuments would create imminent threats to the cultural, historic, and natural treasures in the area,”
