| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
07 Dec 2006 08:12:27 AM |
| Object: |
Oil companies get away with not paying us the money they owe us. |
From The New York Times, 12/7/06:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/washington/07royalty.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1165500349-RzYThaMVKGmkYJVsukU6lQ
Report Says Oil Royalties Go Unpaid
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON --
An eight-month investigation by the Interior Department’s chief
watchdog has found pervasive problems in the government’s program for
ensuring that companies pay the royalties they owe on billions of
dollars of oil and gas pumped on federal land and in coastal waters.
In a scathing report to Congress, the Interior Department’s inspector
general says the agency’s data are often inaccurate, that its
officials rely too heavily on statements by oil companies rather than
actual records and that only about 9 percent of all oil and gas leases
are being reviewed.
The report undermines claims by top Interior officials that the
department is aggressively pursuing underpayments and outright
cheating by companies that drill on property owned by the American
public.
And though investigators did not attempt to estimate the amount of
money that the government might be losing, they cited a host of
weaknesses that make the government vulnerable to being short-changed.
Interior officials defended the program on Wednesday, but announced
that they would develop "an action plan" to address the inspector
general’s recommendations.
The report comes as lawmakers in both parties have been attacking the
Interior Department for failing to correct blunders that department
officials now concede could cost the government as much as $10 billion
over the next five years.
It also reinforces complaints by critics, from auditors within the
agency to lawmakers in both parties, who have said that enforcement
has become superficial, prone to errors and overly deferential to oil
companies.
These are among the inspector general’s findings:
¶ Since 2000, the number of audits has declined by 22 percent and the
number of auditors has been reduced by 15 percent, even though soaring
energy prices have doubled the total amount of money at stake, to
about $10 billion a year.
¶ Though the Interior Department says it has "reviewed" about 72
percent of all revenues from federal leases, it actually examined only
9 percent of all properties and 20 percent of all companies.
¶ The department’s "compliance review" system, a computerized form of
fact-checking that has increasingly replaced audits, essentially
relies on the word of the oil companies being monitored. Officials
conducting such reviews do not ask companies for their actual records.
¶ Government data are incomplete and often inaccurate, making it
almost impossible for enforcement officials to develop strategies for
selecting companies for special scrutiny.
The report said the agency’s follow-up efforts were often sketchy,
because officials who identified underpayments by companies did not
have a procedure for verifying that the agency actually billed the
companies or collected the money.
It also said the agency’s statistics about recovering money were
incomplete, inaccurate and sometimes misleading.
The investigators said they could not even determine how many audits
the government completed each year or whether the government recovered
as much it had identified in underpayments.
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Get the feeling you're being shafted?
Harry
.
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