The next month, the White House backed away from its initial choice for Interior deputy secretary after Manchin suggested she was too hostile to fossil fuels and declined to meet with her. The senator has declined to comment about the hunting trip, and a ConocoPhillips spokesman noted that the company doesn’t advocate for specific nominations. The White House on Wednesday nominated Manchin’s proposed pick for the position: Tommy Beaudreau, an energy lawyer and former Obama administration official with deep ties to Alaska.
The oil and gas industry is pushing back against the administration’s desire to reassess — and perhaps increase — royalty rates for drilling on federal lands, which have remained unchanged for a century. It is hostile to the possibility of Biden curtailing new leases. It also has objected to his proposal to eliminate certain industry tax breaks.
“Eventually, the Department of Interior is going to have to get out of the business of checking boxes for drilling permits and use federal lands to ease that transition to clean energy,” said Joel Clement, a former Interior official and federal whistleblower who is now a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “There’s nothing in the department’s authorizing language that precludes that. It’s just politics and agency culture. And it’s a heavy lift.”