Republicans Eye Boom in Oil and Gas Leases to Pay for Tax Cuts

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Republicans in Congress have drafted plans for a significant increase in oil, gas, and coal lease sales in order to foot the bill for President Trump’s tax cut plans, Bloomberg has reported, citing the draft.

Per that document, the House Natural Resources Committee is eyeing at least four lease sales for the coastal plain of the Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next ten years. The plan also envisages a restart of the lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska plus quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales and new offshore tenders.

Coal tenders are set for a comeback under the committee’s plan as well, Bloomberg reported, as legislators look for ways to offset the loss of tax revenue, seen at $4.5 trillion. Plans for handling this loss include spending cuts of $2 trillion, Bloomberg noted in its report.

The change in oil and gas lease sale policy follows a tumultuous four years during the Biden administration, which made a solid effort to do away with these as part of its transition efforts and when that failed, the admin tried to limit the acreage on offer. Eventually, a pro-transition judge canceled the administration’s last lease sale on the grounds that it had failed to take into account the effect of exploring for oil and gas on the climate.

With the change of the guard at the White House, energy policies changed, too. Now, the Department of the Interior plans to hold an offshore lease sale again, as soon as this year. The new management at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is eyeing some 27 billion barrels of oil and close to 55 trillion cu ft of gas—which translates into a lot of federal budget revenues over the years. This is what the point of the House Natural Resources Committee plans are as well—boosting budget revenues while working to establish that energy dominance that helped get Trump elected.

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