Udall, cousin of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, sent a letter to GAO officials Thursday asking the agency to “undertake an examination of the value of minerals extracted and the amount of revenues collected in fiscal year 2010.” U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., also signed the letter.

“The U.S Department of the Interior manages approximately 700 million acres of subsurface federal minerals on public land and 1.7 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf,” the lawmakers wrote. “These minerals include hard-rock minerals — such as gold, silver and copper — that are available without having to pay a royalty.

“It is vitally important that the American taxpayer receives a fair return for the mineral resources extracted from federal land.”

The lawmakers want the GAO to prepare a report on the minerals being extracted under the 1872 Mining Law, which does not require royalties, and various other mineral leasing acts. Specifically, they want to know:

• The amount of minerals extracted from federal lands and the Outer Continental Shelf and the estimated dollar value of those minerals.

• How much the federal government collected for those minerals, including royalties, rents, and bonuses, and how that amount was determined.

Mark Udall, who has previously co-sponsored legislation to reform the 1872 Mining Law, also would like to see uranium mining regulated under the Mineral Leasing Act, which does require royalty payments for the extraction of oil, gas and coal from federal lands.

Gold prices have skyrocketed in recent years, with Newmont Mining of Denver – the second largest gold mining company in the world — seeing its profits double between 2008 and 2010. Environmentalists want such companies to pay royalties for mining on public lands.

“With record high metals prices and skyrocketing industry profits, it’s time for mining companies to pay their fair share,” said Lauren Pagel, policy director for Earthworks. “When it comes to our public lands, we need sound fiscal policies, not an outdated mining law that lets mining companies fleece taxpayers out of millions.”

Advocacy groups also hope the GAO report will help put an end to subsidies and tax breaks for oil and gas companies currently reaping billions in profits.

“Oil and gas companies are robbing American taxpayers blind,” said Matt Garrington, deputy director of the Checks & Balances Project. “ExxonMobil and BP are making billions and can pay a fair price for developing publicly owned oil and gas resources. The report requested by Rep. Grijalva and Sen. Udall is an important step to stopping the giveaway of our public lands to Big Oil.”

The American Petroleum Institute counters the industry is merely taking the same deductions and breaks available to other businesses, while seeking to offset the enormous up-front capital costs of oil and gas production.

“Contrary to what some in politics and the media have said, the oil and natural gas industry currently enjoys no unique tax credits or deductions,” API officials argue (pdf).

The Uranium Resources Stewardship Act introduced by U.S. Reps. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján would shift the regulation of uranium mining from the 1872 Mining Law to the Mineral Leasing Act and require royalty payments to federal and state governments similar to those paid by the coal, oil and gas industries.

Last year, Udall introduced SB 796, which would have studied “whether uranium should fall under the Mineral Leasing Act system and be subject to a federal royalty that is shared with the state.” But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has consistently blocked any significant reform of the 1872 Mining Law, which was passed by the Grant administration to encourage settlement of the West by miners in the late 19th century.

“It’s time to seriously consider whether uranium should still be classified as a ‘locatable mineral’ governed by the hard-rock mining laws,” Udall told the Colorado Independent last year. Critics of the U.S. uranium mining industry say it is dominated by foreign companies taking advantage of a lack of royalties on federal lands, and that too often toxic waste has been left for American taxpayers to clean up.

Udall is a proponent of reviving the U.S. nuclear power industry to combat climate change by reducing the amount of fossil fuels being consumed to produce electricity. But members of the Colorado conservation community say the state has for too long been on the hook for the “dirty front end” of the uranium mining industry.

“Taxpayers have been fleeced out of millions of dollars in royalties from uranium companies mining on public lands,” Earthworks Policy Director Lauren Pagel said in a release. “The Uranium Resources Stewardship Act charges a moderate 12.5-percent royalty on uranium, which will allow the industry to contribute to cleaning up old uranium mine sites that continue to pollute water and harm nearby communities.”

Uranium prices have dropped in recent weeks due to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, but they’re still up dramatically over the last decade, and Udall says the United States must continue to pursue new nuclear power facilities. He’s introduced a bill this session that would facilitate the construction of smaller, “modular” nuclear reactors.

Michael Bromwich, director of the Interior Department’s newly formed Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, sent a letter today to BP notifying the company of the decision.

Unlike oil and gas extraction, pulling hard-rock minerals like uranium, gold and copper out of the ground is a royalty-free proposition in the United States, despite the often enormous costs of cleaning up public lands after the fact.

The Environmental Protection Agency in a filing on Monday noted that hard-rock mining has impacted 40 percent of all western watersheds and that nationwide 28 percent of the toxic pollution generated in the United States comes from the mining industry –- the most of any sector. The EPA also concluded mining represents a major taxpayer burden because of cleanup costs.

The EPA filing was presented during a hearing Tuesday of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Colorado Sen. Mark Udall. Former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, now Secretary of the Interior, testified the Obama administration wants to see the 1872 Mining Law reformed in the current Congress.

Mining reform legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate, and both versions would set up some sort of royalty structure for hard-rock mining on federal lands. The 137-year-old system of filing for relatively inexpensive and easy-to-acquire “patents” would be scrapped, and a fund would be set up to pay for massive cleanup efforts that for decades have been passed off to taxpayers when mining companies go bankrupt. [...]

Salazar likely will get a fight from Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who in the past has blocked reform measures because of gold mining interests in his home state.