President Donald Trump’s tax cuts law directed the Secretary of the Home to approve legal applications.
The current U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Regulations limits the total to leases with the same mineral ownership, royalty rates and revenue distribution. According to the interior, the requirement said that mineral ownership creates barriers in parts of the West where mineral ownership is complex.
The change will allow oil and gas operators to track production more accurately and calculate trainer payments to the federal government and tribes for fossil fuels produced on public and tribal lands, the department said.
“The current rules were written in a different era,” Home Secretary Doug Burgham said in a statement. “These updates will help you manage public resources more efficiently, support responsible energy production, and ensure that taxpayers and tribes get all the dollars they need to pay.”
The Western Energy Alliance is one of the quickest ways to increase production on land, calling for greater access to mixing, saying many projects have been postponed for years by the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management, which has not approved for the consolidated projects of the federal government and private oil and gas.
The United States is already the world’s top oil and gas producer, and Trump’s “energy control” policy pushes his administration to cut fossil fuel regulations.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Editing by Deepa Babington)
