Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship has released a new in-depth report, Unplugged: The High Cost of Bonding Reform Rollbacks, revealing how the Trump administration’s plan to weaken federal oil and gas bonding requirements could leave American taxpayers responsible for up to $753.5 billion in cleanup costs on public lands. This new analysis comes at a critical moment. Recent federal actions, especially provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, have opened more than 200 million acres of public lands to oil and gas development. Under these new policies, companies could potentially drill as many as 3.8 million new wells across the West. Yet the administration is also preparing to roll back the 2024 bonding reforms that were designed to ensure companies, not taxpayers, pay to plug and reclaim those wells. A Return to an Unfair, Outdated System For decades, inadequate bonding allowed irresponsible operators to walk away from their cleanup obligations, often by filing strategic bankruptcies or shifting ownership to shell companies. The Bureau of Land Management stepped in last year with long-overdue reforms, raising minimum bond amounts for the first time in more than sixty years, to protect taxpayers from exactly this kind of abuse. Rolling back those reforms now would return us to a system that has already failed taxpayers for generations. With bonds averaging just $1,707 per well, there is no realistic mechanism to cover the actual $35,000–$200,000 cost of plugging a modern well. The financial gap gets passed directly to communities and taxpayers. CRS President David Jenkins put it plainly: weakening bonding requirements “enables industry bad actors to scam American taxpayers out of billions,” while rewarding...
One of the first moves President Trump made in his second term was to declare a “National Energy Emergency.” This executive order leans heavily on the claim that the previous administration shut down U.S. fossil fuel production and left America dependent on foreign energy. But that narrative simply isn’t true. In reality, over the past four years, U.S. crude oil production soared to a record-breaking 13 million barrels per day — the highest ever, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. Natural gas production is also at an all-time high, with the U.S. leading the world by producing 41.2 million cubic feet in 2023 alone. So why declare an energy emergency when the country is producing more energy than ever? This move takes us into a confusing and dangerous place where “up” is “down” and “shortage” means “abundance.” The consequences of this declaration are unfolding quickly. The Department of Interior has announced new permitting rules that aim to sidestep key environmental protections, like the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Public lands—places many Americans treasure for outdoor activities like hunting, fishing, and hiking—are suddenly up for grabs for more oil and gas drilling. Beyond public lands, this order could even threaten private property rights by encouraging federal agencies to use eminent domain to force landowners to give up property for energy development. At a time when U.S. oil production is at historic highs and oil companies are already profiting handsomely, this raises serious concerns about fairness and property rights. But the bigger issue is this: Energy markets don’t respond to political orders. They respond to geology and economics. U.S....
If you’ve noticed your utility bills skyrocketing, you’re not alone. Gas and electric bills across the state have been rising at an unprecedented rate over the past several years. And while some of this has been due to natural gas prices and hotter weather, most of it is because big monopoly utilities like NV Energy and Southwest Gas are being allowed to game the system. Here in Nevada, the Public Utility Commission is supposed to provide a check on utility rates, and to balance customer and utility interests. Instead, the PUC is letting these monopolies run wild with one record-breaking rate hike after another. In April, the PUC approved a record $59 million rate increase for Southwest Gas, which is $20 million higher than its previous record hike in 2020. This is despite Southwest Gas reporting a first-quarter net income ($98.5 million) that is more than double that of its first quarter in 2023 ($45.9 million), and a record 12-month operating margin of $1.3 billion. The hike also comes as SWG customers were already reeling from other recent SWG hikes. Even before this latest hike, customers reported their gas bills shooting up more than 300% in a single month. Utilities in Nevada are allowed to make rate adjustments every three months, and those are in addition to the hikes from general rate cases. While average Nevadans are getting hammered by higher and higher gas bills, Southwest Gas officers and shareholders — most of who reside outside of Nevada — are getting richer and richer. And it’s more than just Southwest Gas that keeps bellying up to the PUC...
PRESS RELEASE October 24, 2023 CRS Releases “Restoring Accountability” Follow-up Report on Taxpayer Exposure from Orphaned Oil and Gas Wells Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS), a national grassroots organization with more than 23,000 members, has produced a new report following up on its 2021 report Broken Promises, which detailed the staggering taxpayer exposure from orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. “Despite agreeing, as a condition of their drilling permit, to fully clean up and plug well sites once they are finished using them, oil and gas companies regularly skip out on that obligation, leaving us taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in clean-up costs,” explained CRS president David Jenkins. This new report, with updated data, underscores how this fiscal burden on taxpayers continues to grow and explains how long overdue new rules proposed by the Department of Interior (RIN 1004–AE80) to significantly increase its oil and gas program bonding requirements can help. In Broken Promises, we reported that at the end of FY2020, there were more than 96,000 “producible and service wells” on federal public lands, which could leave U.S. taxpayers on the hook for as much as $13.7 billion in future clean-up costs. Since then, BLM has approved more than 11,200 additional permits for oil and gas companies to drill new wells on federal public lands—wells that, without federal bonding reform in place, potentially exposing U.S. taxpayers to an additional $1.6 billion more in clean-up costs. Taxpayers could eventually have to pony up as much as $15 billion, and that does not account for any potential future wells from the 34,000 oil and gas leases...
