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Taxpayers should be getting more from Utah’s public lands, group says

Taxpayers and the state stand to benefit from increased royalties for oil and gas companies, but the industry claims that American energy will suffer from making the process more expensive.

(Zak Podmore | The Salt Lake Tribune) This oil well, known as South Bluff Fed 1, operated by Diversified Energy LLC on federal land outside Bluff, hasn’t regularly produced since 2014, yet it and three other of the company's non-producing wells nearby have remained unreclaimed. A report from a nonpartisan watchdog group states that Utah taxpayers have missed out on millions in revenue from oil and gas leasing on public lands because the federal government hasn't charged competitive royalty rates and has left taxpayers to shoulder well clean-up costs. The Department of the Interior has proposed increased bond amounts for oil and gas leasing on public lands so that clean-up costs for wells like South Bluff Fed 1 fall on oil and gas companies, not taxpayers.