The Interior Department’s $13.4 billion budget request would make a key conservation fund permanent by using money collected from offshore oil and natural gas drilling to keep funding high, while simultaneously scrapping tax credits enjoyed for decades by the oil industry.
Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell said funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund needs to be made permanent and not subject to the whims of congressional appropriations. The agency will seek to do that by pouring $150 million a year from offshore oil and gas revenue to support the $900 million amount slated for the fund in fiscal 2017. The fund has been a key Democratic priority.
Congress, when it restored the fund late last year, appropriated about half of what Jewell is asking for in the agency’s request.
The use of offshore drilling revenue to boost the conservation fund would be in addition to a $10.25 per-barrel fee on crude oil the administration has proposed to support infrastructure projects. The proposal has been met by strong opposition by the industry.
In addition to the conservation program, the department is also cutting key oil and gas tax credits to help renewable energy, Jewell said.
“It is not a level playing field across the energy landscape, and this budget seeks to make it more level,” Jewell told reporters Tuesday. The budget would remove important tax credits enjoyed by the oil industry for almost a century, including one for “intangible drilling costs,” which allow producers to deduct the cost of drilling a well.
At the same time, the Interior Department’s 2017 request boosts renewable energy development to $97.3 million, an increase of $3.1 million over 2016 enacted levels.
In addition, the budget requests $2 billion in mandatory funding for a new Coastal Climate Resilience program, providing resources over 10 years for “at-risk coastal states, local governments, and their communities to prepare for and adapt to climate change,” according to the agency. The mandatory funds, if approved by Congress, would be more immune to congressional cuts than discretionary funding.
