The energy bill passed by the House Jan. 18 tries to annul a question at the core of the year-long, price-threshold controversy about deepwater royalty relief.Section 203 of the Clean Energy Act of 2007 “reaffirms” authority of the secretary of the interior to limit royalty relief when oil and gas prices are high.But in the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act of 1995, Congress appears to have said something quite different for deepwater Gulf of Mexico leases awarded in the 5 years following Nov. 28, 1995.The prevalent assumption in the controversy is that the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service failed to insert price thresholds in deepwater leases granted i...