“When you have a declining industry, you have an agency that’s collecting a lot fewer fees and surcharges from that industry and so that structure results in a gap in the amount of funding that you need to pay for clean up,” said Commission Shift, Executive Director, Virginia Palacios.
She thinks the RRC should be increasing oil and gas operator fees to cover the cost of plugging orphan wells and she worries they’re leaning on taxpayers to subsidize the industry.
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