{"id":571,"date":"2025-05-28T11:14:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T11:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sewellconsultancy.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2025-06-02T03:10:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T03:10:55","slug":"reduced-royalties-and-environmental-review-among-republicans-proposed-gifts-to-the-oil-and-gas-industry-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sewellconsultancy.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/reduced-royalties-and-environmental-review-among-republicans-proposed-gifts-to-the-oil-and-gas-industry-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Reduced royalties and environmental review among Republicans\u2019 proposed gifts to the oil and gas industry (Opinion)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in Jackson County, in northern Colorado, where hundreds of inactive and abandoned oil wells litter the landscape. Not only are they an ugly sight, they are also just a few of the estimated 2.6 million unplugged wells<\/a> across the country that leak methane, benzene and other toxic substances.<\/p>\n

The reality is that long after I\u2019m gone, most or all of those wells will remain unplugged. The companies and people who once owned them will have been allowed to walk away from their responsibility to clean up their mess.<\/p>\n

Uncapped wells are what happens when the federal government enables the fossil-fuel industry to dominate energy policies, as is happening again now, both in the Interior Department and Congress. The policies emerging would allow companies, including many foreign ones, to profit from public lands and minerals that all Americans own. They would also leave taxpayers holding the bag for cleaning up leaking wells.<\/p>\n

These abandoned wells already have consequences for wildlife, air, water and rural people. Kirk Panasuk, a rancher in Bainville, Montana, said: \u201cI have personally experienced serious health scares after breathing toxic fumes from oil and gas wells near my property. And I\u2019ve seen too many of my friends and neighbors in this part of the country have their water contaminated or their land destroyed by rushed and reckless industrial projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans and Democrats in previous administrations and Congresses took pains to reform this historically biased federal energy system because of the damage done to rural communities and American taxpayers. Now, the federal government is rolling back those reforms.<\/p>\n

Recently, the Interior Department announced that \u201cemergency permitting procedures\u201d were necessary when carrying out NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Timelines for environmental assessments for fossil-fuel projects were changed from one year to 14 days, without requiring a public comment period. The timeline for more complicated environmental impact statements was cut from two years to 28 days, with only a 10-day public comment period.<\/p>\n

In May, the House Natural Resources Committee unveiled its piece of the House budget bill, which enables the federal government to expedite oil, gas, coal and mineral development. It gives Americans basically no say on whether those projects should move ahead, while keeping taxpayers from receiving a fair return on the development of publicly owned lands and minerals.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s justification for expediting permits is that we face \u201ca national energy emergency.\u201d No such emergency exists. The United States is currently the world\u2019s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and is producing more oil than any other country on Earth.<\/p>\n