U.S. Department of the Interior
Minerals Management Service
Office of Communications

NEWS RELEASE

MMS TO HOLD PUBLIC RIK MEETING IN CASPER, WY

The Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) will hold a one-day public meeting on February 24, 1998, to discuss developing and implementing a royalty-in-kind (RIK) pilot program for crude oil produced from federal leases in Wyoming. The meeting will be from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Hilton Inn Casper, 800 North Poplar Road, Casper, Wyoming. It will be open to the public without advance reservation. The feasibility and effectiveness of several potential model RIK programs will be discussed. A Federal Register notice published today has additional information about the planned pilot and associated issues. Public comments are requested.

In collaboration with the State of Wyoming, MMS intends to develop and implement a pilot program to take crude oil royalties from federal leases within the boundaries of Wyoming as a share of production (i.e., "in-kind" rather than "in-cash") and subsequently sell that crude oil in the open oil market. Plans include beginning the pilot on October 1, 1998, and continuing the project for two years.

In addition to the Wyoming project, MMS is developing two other RIK pilot programs based on the recommendations in the MMS 1997 RIK Feasibility Study. They are an offshore natural gas RIK pilot in the 8(g) waters off Texas, and an offshore Gulf of Mexico natural gas RIK pilot. The objectives of each pilot program are to test the effectiveness of the RIK concept for collecting federal oil and gas royalties.

The MMS is the federal agency that manages the Nation's oil, natural gas, and other mineral resources on the OCS. MMS also collects, accounts for, and disburses more than $4 billion yearly in revenues from offshore federal mineral leases and from onshore mineral leases on federal and Indian lands.

-MMS-

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