Under pressure to bring down gasoline prices, The US government announced on Friday that it will reopen fiscal lands to the exploitation of hydrocarbons under new conditions, including the first increase in taxes on production in more than 100 years.
The Ministry of the Interior indicated that from next week it would auction exploitation licenses for some 173 parcels totaling some 58,000 hectares in nine states.
The proposed area is 80% less than initially planned and the treasury will increase the production taxes –which had not risen for at least a century– from 12.5% to 18.75% of profits.
Interested companies will also have to agree to abide by the new terms, such as consulting Native American tribes or following “best available scientific methods” for greenhouse emissions analysis.
The measurement is taken at times when the Democratic President Joe Biden faces record inflation, particularly in the price of gasoline.
The skyrocketing price per gallon hits the popularity of Biden and the Democrats, after the era of self-sufficiency achieved by the United States in terms of hydrocarbons during the previous administration of Republican Donald Trump.
For several weeks, Joe Biden has been taking initiatives aimed at lowering crude oil prices, ordering, for example, at the end of March, massive use of the strategic reserves of Petroleum.
The return to bidding for the exploitation of oil and gas on federal land should not, however, have an immediate effect, the process generally takes several years.
The president, who had made the fight against the climate change One of his priorities, he proclaimed after his arrival at the White House, in January 2021, a moratorium on the granting of new concessions for oil and gas drilling on land and waters belonging to the government, in the process of review.
The moratorium proclaimed by Biden, which was already underway, was suspended by a judge in June 2021, considering that congressional approval was needed.
Weeks later, the government had committed to the sale of offshore concessions, in the Gulf of Mexicobut were overturned by the Justice Department in January.
The Interior Ministry also approved thousands of oil and gas development permits on federal land in 2021.
