September 14, 2018 — A House committee voted Thursday to increase the money coastal states receive from offshore oil and natural gas drilling off their coasts.
The bill, from Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.), would give Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama half of the fee and royalty payments that companies give the federal government to drill for oil and gas in a set of new wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
That would be an increase from the current 37.5 percent, which last year amounted to 0.4 percent of the government’s total income from offshore drilling going to Louisiana last year, or $11 million, Graves said.
At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Graves framed the issue as one of shoring up states’ coasts. All of the money Louisiana gets from offshore drilling goes to coastal resilience, and Graves said his bill would mandate a quarter of the money go for that purpose for all four states.
“We’ve got to stop the stupidity of spending billions of dollars after disasters instead of millions before,” Graves said.
The panel passed the bill by voice vote after an intense debate over whether Gulf states should get special treatment for the drilling that occurs off their shores.
In one exchange, Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), the panel’s top Democrat, wanted the money to go to all coastal states for resilience, not just the Gulf of Mexico ones.