The following is a statement from Ms. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense on yesterday’s announcement from The Department of the Interior (DOI) that it will not lower royalty rates on offshore oil and gas leases. In late February, the Royalty Policy Committee, a DOI advisory panel, recommended a proposal to lower royalty rates for oil and gas produced in federal waters to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Today’s announcement is a welcome departure from the recent actions at the Department of the Interior to gut taxpayer protections and decrease federal revenues.  For decades, taxpayers have lost billions of dollars in royalties from oil and gas operations and it’s time to fix this broken system.

Secretary Zinke should be representing taxpayer interests and increasing royalties rates, royalty collection, and overall transparency at the DOI. Instead what we’ve seen over the last year is a series of actions that cost taxpayers valuable revenue – from wasted methane to rock bottom leases sales.  We hope that today’s action is a sign of things to come rather than an aberration. We will be watching further developments at the department closely and will continue to speak up in order to safeguard taxpayer interests.

– Ryan Alexander, president