As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources on April 24, 2013
H.R. 767 would authorize the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to expand a pilot program that aims to accelerate and enhance the federal oil and gas permitting process at certain BLM offices. Under current law, 50 percent of onshore oil and gas rental payments received by BLM (excluding those from Alaska) is available to fund the pilot program at seven BLM offices through 2015. The bill would allow the Secretary to use those funds at additional offices in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.
Because CBO expects that any funds spent at the offices added to the pilot project under the bill would be spent at other offices under current law, we estimate that implementing the legislation would have no significant net impact on the federal budget. Enacting H.R. 767 could affect direct spending if expanding the pilot program resulted in BLM spending funds faster than it would under current law; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. However, CBO estimates that any such impacts would be small over the 2014-2023 period. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.
H.R. 767 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments.
On April 3, 2013, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for S. 244, a bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to modify the pilot project offices of the Federal Permit Streamlining Pilot Project, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on March 14, 2013. The two bills are similar, and the CBO cost estimates are the same.