Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized revisions to how the federal government measures and verifies oil and gas production rates on federal lands (Onshore Orders 3, 4 and 5). House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bishop (R-UT) issued the following statement:

“The Administration is good at issuing new regulations that ignore input from the folks they seek to overregulate. That’s what they’ve done here.

"Ensuring transparency in the calculation of royalties is a shared goal, but imposing this severe regulatory burden is counterproductive. Collectively, these regulations will crush current and future energy development and result in large royalty losses. Once again, the Administration’s regulations will end up undercutting their stated goal for the rewrite in the first place.   

“The BLM should go back to square one and this time engage industry stakeholders at the onset to craft a rule beneficial to both taxpayers and the regulated community.”

In November 2015, Chairman Bishop expressed concerns in a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze about the lack of stakeholder engagement during the revision process.