The U.S. Interior Department said March 29 that it would form a new committee to review royalty rates collected from oil and gas drilling and coal mining on federal lands to ensure taxpayers receive their full value.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the committee would advise him on whether the government is getting a fair price from companies that lease public land for energy and natural resource development.
The committee will replace the process put in place by former Interior secretary Sally Jewell to review and overhaul the federal coal leasing program.
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"I have established a royalty policy committee to provide advice to me about how we value collections across the board," Zinke told reporters March 29.
"The programmatic review put in place [by Jewell] was costly and unnecessary," he said.
In January 2016, the Obama administration began a multiyear review of the federal coal-leasing program after government and watchdog reports found Interior's Bureau of Land Management was not properly accounting for the fair market value of coal.
It also ordered a moratorium on new coal leases for at least three years during the review, which President Donald Trump officially rescinded in the executive order on energy he signed March 28.
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