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Sen. Wyden sees 'third path' on offshore drilling royalties
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) believes lawmakers will be able to find broad support for a “third path” and push through an agreement on awarding drilling royalties to Gulf Coast states in the next Congress.
Wyden, who is poised to be the next Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, acknowledged that the debate over how to share revenue from offshore drilling among the Gulf states had “divided the committee starkly,” in remarks at an event hosted Thursday by CQ.
The Oregon senator, though, said the issue was broader than just the Gulf, noting that coastal communities in other parts of the country were also looking to future revenue from offshore energy projects. Wyden cited efforts to develop offshore wind farms on federal lands in New England.
He explained that by bringing in lawmakers representing communities outside the Gulf, Congress could “knit together a national coalition to come up with a fresh approach” to ensure “resource-dependent communities” benefit from federal energy royalties.
“The Senator is encouraged that the Energy Committee will have a chairman that understands why revenue sharing is critical for the country’s energy security and coastal restoration efforts in the Gulf. She looks forward to working with him to make full and fair revenue sharing from all federal lands a reality for Louisiana and the entire country,” Landrieu spokesman Matthew Lehner said in a Thursday statement to The Hill.
Landrieu’s staff has said Wyden appeared amenable to working on the royalties issue when it was up for committee vote. But retiring Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) held up the bill, arguing those revenues should go directly to the federal government.
Landrieu’s bill would have lifted a $500 million cap on offshore drilling royalties given to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. It also would have permitted the states to begin collecting those payments in 2015, rather than 2017.
The bill also established a revenue-sharing mechanism for federal offshore wind projects, with an eye toward winning support from Pacific Northwest committee members like Wyden and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).
