The Trump administration followed through on its promise to address energy project permit decision delays with a proposed fiscal 2019 federal budget on Feb. 12 that included $185 million for that purpose and for related rights-of-way questions at the US Bureau of Land Management. The amount also included funding to establish a competitive leasing program on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain, which was authorized under the recently enacted federal tax reform act.
At the US Environmental Protection Agency, the proposed 2019 federal budget includes a permit review process within a broader reform plan that also includes deploying a lean management system and reducing reporting burdens on the regulated community. The agency also will seek $50.9 million for underground tank storage cleanups and state cooperative agreements, $12.3 million for its oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response program, and $27 million in grants to state agencies seeking to direct federal money to priorities the states consider important.
Elsewhere in the proposed budget, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund excise tax would be reestablished, producing a projected $354 million in receipts in 2019, more than $2.62 billion from 2019 to 2023, and more than $4.78 billion from 2019 to 2028.
The White House produced its annual proposed federal budget for the coming fiscal year closer to its customary time in 2018 than it did a year earlier, when it was delayed for a few months. Congress normally modifies the requests over several months before sending a final budget to the president for his signature.
In recent years, lawmakers were unable to agree and passed continuing resolutions using numbers from the previous year instead. President Donald Trump signed into law the budget for fiscal 2018, covering the period from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2018, days before the White House submitted its fiscal 2019 budget proposal (OGJ Online, Feb. 9, 2018).
Overall, the US Department of the Interior would have an $11.8-billion budget that would include a Public Lands Infrastructure Fund to be funded from a projected 50%
