In pressure to lower gas prices, the US government will concede new hydrocarbon licenses on federal lands, while imposing new conditions and rising tariffs.
Le Monde with AFP
Joe Biden recedes on a key promise of his program. The American President who has made the fight against climate change one of his priorities, had shortly after his arrival at the White House in January 2021 proclaimed a moratorium on the granting of new concessions for oil and gas drilling on the land and The waters belonging to the government, waiting for a revision.
The Ministry of the Interior indicated in a statement Friday, April 15 that it would auction, from next week, about 173 plots representing 144,000 acres (58,275 hectares) in nine states.
Several changes, however, will be operated. The proposed surface is now 80% less than that which had been considered initially. Above all, the ministry will increase the charges requested, which had not moved for at least a century, from 12.5% to 18.75% of profits. Interested companies will have to finally comply with new conditions, such as a consultation of the Native American tribes or the respect of the “best scientific methods available” for the analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in particular.
Popularity in Bern
This measure comes at the time the US President faces record inflation, particularly the price of gasoline, which matches its popularity. It has been taking initiatives for several weeks to lower crude classes, ordering for example at the end of March to tap massively on the country’s oil strategic reserves.
However, the recovery of concessions for oil and gas operations on federal land, however, should not have an immediate effect, the process generally taking several years.
The moratorium proclaimed by Joe Biden had already been well began, a judge suspended him in June 2021 by considering that the administration had to obtain the approval of the Congress. The government had hired a few weeks later the auction of concessions at sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, canceled by justice in January. The Ministry of the Interior has also approved thousands of oil and gas licenses on federal land in 2021.