Companies may pay more to drill, mine on public land

Energy companies could pay the federal government higher royalties for oil, gas and other resources extracted from public land, under a review Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke authorized Wednesday.

The two-year review is designed to determine whether Americans are getting a fair return for those natural resources, he said in an interview.

'We're going to re-evaluate royalty rates across the board,” Zinke said, stressing that the analysis will touch on the price developers pay for generating renewable power as well as unearthing fossil fuels.

His approach is rooted in the idea that 'what we do on public lands is in the best interest of the taxpayer. I want to make sure the taxpayer gets value out of it,” Zinke said.

Zinke also signed an order resuming the sale of new leases to mine coal from federal land, following a directive issued by President Donald Trump on Tuesday. With the document, Zinke revoked an order from his predecessor that halted those sales in January 2015 and ended a broad environmental review of the coal leasing program that the Obama administration launched at the same time.

The Interior Department generally would have to propose and adopt new rules to revise royalties for wind and solar production as well as oil, gas and coal development. Zinke said he would follow up on the committee's eventual recommendations 'and put rules forth that are appropriate.”