The Trump Administration’s budget request for fiscal 2021 would not impede oil and gas resource management on federal lands if accepted by Congress.
The request, released Feb. 10, attempts to keep Interior Department spending on an even keel while urging a few more notable changes for the Energy Department.
For the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) within Interior, the budget plan would add $2.4 million to the Oil and Gas Permit Processing Improvement Fund to bring spending for fiscal 2021 up to $56.3 million. The program addresses the chronic complaints of companies about the slowness of permit processing.
But the overall BLM budget at $139.2 million would hardly change at all, down only $700,000 from the level enacted for fiscal 2020.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) budget would slip $2.8 million to $191.6 million, while the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) budget would gain $1 million to $204 million. BOEM leases federal offshore resources while BSEE regulates safety and environmental protection for offshore resource development.
A BSEE budget document stressed that the agency would continue to focus much of its effort on “risk-based” inspections, targeting more hazardous facilities and operations. The agency said it is also is trying to strengthen its ability to deal with the corporate bankruptcies, which raise the risk of companies defaulting on their obligation to decommission facilities at the end of their useful lifetimes.
The Trump administration budget request for the Energy Department included proposals to sell off the gasoline and heating oil in two regional reserves and shut the reserves down.
The government maintains one million bbl of gasoline and one million bbl of ultra-low-sulfur distillate in the Northeastern gasoline and heating oil strategic reserves. But they are not being used for their intended purposes, the Trump administration said.
In reference to the gasoline reserve, the Trump administration said its shutdown proposal was “consistent with past budget requests,” a reminder that administration budget proposals often resurface annually only to be rejected by Congress. Members of Congress from New York and New England tend to be proponents of the two Northeastern reserves.
The Trump administration wants to continue the program of crude oil sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.