The lease sales … will include 173 parcels on about 144,000 acres, or about 20 percent of the area that had been nominated for energy-related lease sales and the overall acreage Interior analyzed for inclusion in potential sales.
By the numbers: “The royalty rate for new leases will increase to 18.75% from 12.5%. That’s a 50% jump,” according to the AP.
- “Interior will include the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental analysis of the parcels up for auction, it said. … Environmental groups have pushed the Biden administration to rewrite the guidelines for lease sales to factor in the effect on climate change and to reduce the amount of federal land open to oil and gas drilling,” according to POLITICO Pro.
- While all this will potentially raise prices for consumers even further, economists say that “a higher royalty rate would have a relatively small effect on global emissions, because any reductions in oil and gas from federal lands would be largely offset by fuel from other sources,” according to the AP.