Biden wants oil companies to pay much more to drill on federal lands

Oil and gas drillers would have to commit more than 10 times as much money to guarantee their wells won't pollute under an Interior Department proposal announced Thursday, the first such update to the program in more than a half-century.

"We don't want the taxpayers holding the bag in the future," Laura Daniel-Davis, Interior principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, said in a phone interview. Administration officials have accused oil and gas companies of hoarding federal land without drilling it, saying that is bad for consumer energy prices, and say they are trying to fix an antiquated rule book that shortchanges taxpayers. Daniel-Davis said the administration wants to reduce incentives for "speculators - less responsible actors that have been out on the landscape.

Interior officials are also working on a new rule they say will prioritize conservation on par with energy development, mining and recreation, a sea change for how it manages public lands. They have delayed a new, legally required five-year plan for offshore drilling, which they plan to release late this year. And in the coming months the Environmental Protection Agency is slated to set new rules to tax and limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas operations.

The law also boosted the floor for bidders trying to lease oil and gas land to $10 an acre, up from $2. The new proposal would adopt that and, after 10 years, set it to keep rising with inflation. The law also set new minimum fees for what leaseholders pay to maintain their acreage and for new bidders to nominate areas for bidding, and Interior wants to put those in place long term, too.

Environmentalists have asked for the administration to put more emphasis on climate effects in the revised rules, and use them to potentially phase out new oil and gas leasing. Biden, as a candidate, had pledged to end drilling on federal land, but the new proposal doesn't go that far.

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