# Bonding Reform and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2023

This bill is designed to make sure that oil and gas companies, rather than taxpayers, pay for cleaning up the mess they leave behind when they drill on public lands. Right now, when oil and gas operations end, the government often gets stuck footing the bill for reclamation work—plugging abandoned wells, removing equipment, and restoring the land. This bill tries to prevent that by requiring companies to post bigger financial guarantees upfront and follow stricter cleanup rules.

The core requirement is that before any drilling begins, oil and gas operators must post a bond (basically a financial guarantee) that covers the full cost of reclamation. The bill sets minimum bond amounts—at least $150,000 for individual drilling sites or $500,000 for all activities in a state—but the actual amount must be enough to cover complete cleanup. These minimum amounts would increase every three years to keep up with inflation. If a company fails to clean up properly on one lease, the government can prevent them from getting new leases until they fix the problem. The bill also requires companies to submit detailed interim and final reclamation plans showing exactly how they'll restore the land, and the government must approve these plans before drilling can start.

The bill adds new fees that oil and gas operators must pay annually to cover the cost of government inspections. Depending on how many wells are on a lease, companies would pay between $700 and $9,800 per year. Additionally, the bill creates a small per-barrel fee (at least 10 cents per barrel of oil equivalent) specifically to fund the cleanup of orphaned wells—abandoned wells that no company will claim responsibility for. The bill also applies these same bonding and reclamation requirements to oil and gas operations on National Wildlife Refuge lands, ensuring that sensitive ecosystems are protected and restored at the company's expense, not the public's.