President Joe Biden’s administration wants to raise the pressure on oil and gas companies operating on government properties, the Washington Post reported. The Department of the Interior released a report Friday calling for higher rates on energy firms extracting from federally-owned land, although it did not specifically suggest how much the current 12.5 percent surcharge on profits should go up. The current fee system “fails to provide a fair return to taxpayers, even before factoring in the resulting climate-related costs,” the new paper asserts.
The Post noted that the call for squeezing oil and gas producers using federal land and waters coincides with the president’s efforts to contain the spiking price of fuel and his policy push to shift the country to renewable energy. Biden’s signature Build Back Better program would include a hike in onshore drilling rates, but faces a tough gamut in the Senate, where energy industry ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wields tremendous power. The Post report cited estimates that a six-point increase in the surcharge would reap a billion-dollar annual windfall for the federal treasury.
