White House: Scrap Drilling Revenue Sharing with Gulf States
Louisiana’s U.S. senators and environmental groups are blasting the White House for proposing to help Alaska deal with rising seas by taking money away from similar efforts along the Gulf Coast.
In its proposed budget for 2017, the White House said Tuesday it wanted to repeal a 2006 provision that establishes a formula for sharing revenues from offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico with four Gulf states.
The vast majority of those revenues now go to the federal government, but starting next year Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas are slated to begin receiving a large portion of those funds.
In its new budget proposal, the White House called for “repealing” those payments, saying they were “unnecessary and costly.”
The White House proposal faces stiff opposition in Congress.
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