Posted on 10/15/2009 10:26:09 PM PDT by Nachum
The new Interior Department looks into a move to lock in beneficial royalties and regulations for companies with leases on public lands -- denounced by some as a massive giveaway to the oil industry.
Reporting from Washington - The Obama Interior Department is reviewing a decision made by the Bush administration in its final days that attempted to lock in lucrative royalty rates and favorable regulations for oil companies holding leases for oil shale development on public lands.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The list, ping
More imports less domestic production to destroy America.
Pray for America
Waving their hands before they shut it down?
Yes, it’s much better to buy oil from terrorists who hate us.
The Obama manure fueled express rolls along - reverse every single thing passed under GWB until the Nation is restored to a nice Klintonian style of life. I wonder who will play the role of Monica for The Messiah?
So you support funds from domestic production being handed to foreign oil companies? Or are you against what the Bush administration did?
I agree..this was a slap in the face of the American taxpayer, and much like the Clean Water Act exemptions for single industries, it’s corrupt central planning.
There’s not even the cover of doing a giveaway to an American company, or to Sinclair (which sells 0% oil from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela). This was pure and simple a ripoff of the taxpayers to give a handout to foreign oil.
Helen Thomas or Larry Sinclair?
Shell was offered a preferential rate to develop a new technology.
They’ve done that. Now that the technology is ready for larger scale operations, perhaps even commercial operations, the government has done two things. They’ve declared a moratorium on oil shale, and now they are reversing the rate originally agreed to.
Essentially, its a shake down. If they don’t agree to re-write the contracts, they don’t get permission to operate, and its all for nothing, and their investment is worthless.
And maybe, having agreed, they won’t get permission anyway.
We’re sending several hundred billion a year out of the country to buy fuel, while we’re sitting on Saudi-sized oil shale reserves. We’ve got record unemployment, and bankrupt state governments, all the while sitting on top of Saudi-sized oil reserves. The technology is there, despite all the roadblocks the government threw at them, they’ve invented a technical answer to every one. And still there it sits.
This is what happens when you turn control of your economy over to OPEC shills.
The royalties in question were handed from the American people to Shell about a year ago. Shell has been conducting field tests for in-situ conversion and recovery for nearly a quarter-century. These rates were not "offered" or "agreed upon" but were handed out.
One thing that does come across in this whole fiasco is how executives are far dumber than the technical folks and cost their employers millions with their idiocy and indiscretion.
"...Last November, Interior officials finalized regulations and royalties, which the companies would pay the government, as a way to guide that commercial production. The agency set royalty rates that started at 5% of production revenue, well below the federal average for oil and gas royalties...."
So this sounds to me like the Bush administration was trying to provide a carrot to entice development of the technology to exploit shale oil.
Am I misreading this?
I admit to developing a knee jerk reaction to every single policy the Obama administration proposes or enacts. I have been right 95% of the time. Does this make me a bad person?
They should do what Sarah did and makes those funds to US the taxpayer
However, Another official, C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management in the last years of the Bush White House, said that the administration was simply embedding existing regulatory and royalty language in the leases themselves. The regulations were the result of a long and "transparent" public process, he said.
It is up to the lawyers now.
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