Democrats out to destroy fossil fuels business?

 Bryan Preston:

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API has detailed the full-spectrum attack on U.S. energy producers in an email it is sending to its subscribers. PJ Media obtained the email Tuesday evening.

1. Disincentivizing Federal Lease Bidding

• 500% Minimum Bid Increase: Would raise onshore minimum lease bid from $2/acre to $10/acre. By BLM office 2020 sales, 11% of leases sold in New Mexico were below $10/acre; 78% in Colorado; and 30% in North Dakota.
• Cuts Time to Produce in Half: Would reduce the primary term for new onshore leases from 10 years to 5 years, even though a significant percentage of leases require more than 5 years to start producing. For example, recent data shows that 37% of leases in New Mexico started production more than 5 years after authorization.
• More Than Doubles Annual Rent: Would raise annual rental rates to $3/acre for the first 2 years, and then $5/acre, increasing costs by at least $123 million per year.
• Eliminates Possibility of Royalty Relief: Would eliminate authority to grant royalty relief in difficult times or national emergency.
• Imposes New Inspection Fee: Would raise the minimum inspection fees each operator will pay annually to anywhere from $800-$11,300 per lease, varying by lease.

2. Imposing Huge New Costs on Production

• Increased Royalty Rates: Would raise onshore royalty rate floor by more than half from 12.5% to 20% on new leases and would raise the already high offshore royalty rate floor to 20%.
• New Royalties on Venting/Flaring: Would require royalties to be paid on all gas produced, including gas used or consumed for the benefit of the lease such as gathering compressors and gas that is consumed or lost by venting, flaring, or fugitive releases, with limited exceptions, which would raise royalty payments on average by 6.5%.
• 1500-2000% Bonding Increase: Would increase onshore federal lease bond minimum by 15X for a federal lease bond, by 20X for a statewide bond, and removes the nationwide bond option. Additionally, it calls for rulemaking that will require bonding to cover 100% of the reclamation costs of a lease on federal lands that have less than 0.05% of federal wells orphaned.
• New Expression of Interest Fee: Would impose a minimum $15/acre to notify the government of public interest in leasing. Onshore leases can be as large as 2,560 acres, thus costing up to $38,400/lease.
• New “Resource” Fee: Would impose a $4/acre annual fee on producing leases, thus costing up to $10,240/lease for onshore leases, and $23,040/lease for offshore leases.
• New Leasing Fee: Would impose a $6/acre annual fee on non-producing leases, thus costing up to $15,360 for each onshore lease, and $34,560 for each offshore lease.
• New Severance Tax Fee: Would impose a new annual, non-refundable Federal severance fee “tax” on every barrel of oil equivalent produced from new leases on federal lands and waters.
• New Idled Wells Fee: Would impose an annual cost anywhere from $500-$7,500 per idled well per year, and would deem a well “nonoperational” after 2 years, down from 7 years.

3. Excluding Huge Areas of Rich Natural Resources:Several measures would severely limit access to federal natural gas and oil development – including terminating some existing leases – in Alaska (ANWR/NPRA) and the Gulf of Mexico (Eastern Planning Area), which would hurt local communities that use this royalty revenue for conservation, education, and infrastructure.

4. Increasing Pipeline Transportation Costs:Would impose a new $10,000/mile annual fee for water depths greater than 500 ft.; and $1,000/mile for water depths less than 500 ft. There are approximately 26 thousand miles of pipelines in the offshore with about 12.6k miles in waters less than 400 ft and 13.7k miles in waters greater than 400 ft. Increased annual costs would total ~$149 million.

None of that has anything to do with improving infrastructure. The pipeline provision actively hurts pipelines, which remain the safest and environmentally cleanest way to transport energy from the source to where it’s refined and used. That provision alone would directly harm the environment. The whole suite of fees and exclusions would make energy more expensive to produce in the United States, ending what’s left of the energy independence the country achieved during the previous administration.

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None of this makes much sense.  It is apparently an effort to switch the US to use of inefficient and unreliable alternative energy such as wind and solar.  Both of those are vulnerable to extreme weather events when energy is needed most.  Texas suffered from the failure of wind energy during last winter's deep freeze and recent hurricanes destroyed solar energy farms costing millions.  These events suggest that even a warmer planet is better than living with unreliable energy sources.  It should also be noted that projections of global warming and climate change have been serially wrong for decades.  The follow of pattern of claims of 10 to 12 years to save the planet over the last 50 years and everyone of those projections has been wrong.