The Trump administration has rejected most requests for royalty relief submitted by onshore oil and gas companies struggling with reduced demand for fuel and battered prices, a top Interior Department official said on Friday. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has been fielding individual applications for royalty reductions and lease suspensions from drillers since April after rejecting industry calls for broad cuts to help them grapple with fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve been very conservative with how those are approved or disapproved,” Casey Hammond, principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, said in an interview on Friday. He was not able to say how many applications had been submitted or denied, but said overall requests had lagged expectations. “I wouldn’t say they are coming in at any great pace,” he said. The agency’s conservative approach is justified by the recent uptick in fuel demand that […]