The following article by Juliet Eilperin was posted on the Washington Post website October 6, 2017:
President Trump and many of his top aides have expressed skepticism about climate change, while others say human activity is to blame for global warming. So what’s the administration’s real position? (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Top Interior Department officials worked privately with energy industry representatives during the first weeks of the Trump administration to suspend a new accounting system that would have forced companies to pay millions of dollars more in royalties to the government, documents show.
The push to suspend the Obama-era rule, which is the subject of three federal lawsuits in Wyoming, took on a sense of urgency after an attorney for the coal company Cloud Peak Energy first suggested the move in late January. In email exchanges contained in more than 1,000 pages, obtained by the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council under the Freedom of Information Act, top Interior officials raced to address industry concerns by halting a system that had just taken effect on Jan. 1. Continue reading “Interior Department worked behind the scenes with energy industry to reverse royalties rule”