Oil and gas companies face at least a tenfold increase in costs to drill on federal lands under a Biden administration rule aimed at generating more money for taxpayers and protecting them from cleanup costs.
the nation’s largest expanse of public land. Bloomberg News first reported that the Interior Department is expected to finalize the plan — another key plank of the president’s conservation agenda — in the coming days. Kate Groetzinger, communications manager at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group, said the changes are “only fair” after the country’s largest oil and gas companies reported their biggest annual profits in a decade last year. ExxonMobil reported $36 billion in earnings, while Chevron netted $21.4 billion.Fossil fuel industry trade groups, for their part, voiced strong concerns about the BLM’s proposed rule released last summer.
“I don’t know any company that just wants to speculate or just sit on leases,” Naatz said. “The goal is to produce.”