The solution, to me, seems simple... have royalty brackets that are like tax brackets in that the royalty rate "steps up" depending on what the current price of the resource is. For natural gas, set the current bracket so that there is no increase in royalties for that resource at current prices. The brackets would have to be inflation adjusted and would be based on some sort of benchmark (trailing 6 month average price or something like that.) For oil, I would set the brackets so that if prices fell back to lower levels, the rate would return to what it is today.
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