Interior resumes oil and gas leases on public lands, raises royalty rates

The U.S. Interior Department is reopening oil and gas lease sales on public lands this summer, and hiking the fees lessees have to pay. The announcement follows President Joe Biden’s efforts to reform the federal oil and gas program. Last year a federal judge blocked Biden’s moratorium on new leases. And then a sale scheduled to happen earlier this year was delayed by a legal wrangling over the administration’s “social cost of carbon” policy. The new lease sales include 144,000 acres of public land, mostly in the Mountain West.