Oil Companies Say Interior Unlawfully Denied Royalty Refunds

Oil and gas companies are challenging the Interior Department’s decision to deny refunds for royalties overpayments for leases offshore of Louisiana.

Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue implemented a “bad-faith plan” to deny the refunds, Century Exploration Limited Partnership, Century Exploration New Orleans, and Upstream Exploration LLC—an engineering services provider—told the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Thursday.

They alleged that ONRR’s plan included “arbitrarily changing four interpretations of its regulations on valuing federal oil and gas royalties” and withholding at least 146 documents from the administrative record to “conceal its plan ...