Tweet
The Government Accountability Office is out with its latest report on areas of the government that are at a high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. The newest addition to the list is the Department of Interior’s management of federal oil and gas resources. The problems with the program could be costing taxpayers billions given that oil and gas resources are a significant source of federal revenue. From the GAO Report (PDF):
Revenue collection. In 2008, GAO reported that Interior collected lower levels of revenues for oil and gas production than all but 11 of 104 oil and gas resource owners whose revenue collection systems were evaluated in a comprehensive industry study—these resource owners included many other countries as well as some states. GAO recommended that Interior undertake a comprehensive reassessment of its revenue collection policies and processes. Interior has commissioned such a study in response to GAO’s September 2008 report, which it expects to complete in 2011. The results of the study may reveal the potential for greater revenues to the federal government. GAO also reported in 2010 that neither BLM nor MMS had consistently met their statutory requirements or agency goals for oil and gas production verification inspections. Without such verification, Interior cannot provide reasonable assurance that the public is collecting its legal share of revenue from oil and gas development on federal lands and waters. In addition, GAO reported in 2009 on numerous problems with Interior’s efforts to collect data on oil and gas produced on federal lands,including missing data, errors in company-reported data on oil and gas production, sales data that did not reflect prevailing market prices for oil and gas, and a lack of controls over changes to the data that companies reported. As a result of Interior’s lack of consistent and reliable data onthe production and sale of oil and gas from federal lands, Interior cnot provide reasonable assurance that it was assessing and collecting appropriate amount of royalties on this production.
During this recent debate about the deficit and cutting programs that help regular people, it is important to keep in mind that not only are the oil companies receiving massive tax subsidies directly from the government, but, thanks to lack oversight and bad lease agreements, the federal government is likely getting a far smaller share of the domestic oil revenue than it should.
9 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
Wait until the GAO looks at rangeland management and mining leases.
Low fees for grazing, mining and energy extraction on/from public lands have been a long-standing corporate welfare feature of the American landscape. How many BLM people are on the corporate dole? is the question.
Great minds . . .
Only a few would put them directly on the corporate pay role. You simply as a corporations say something to the extent we are happy to pay $1 million a year for five years as “contractors” to former BLM decision makers once they leave public service.
Legal bribery
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/02/02/in-america-there-are-three-forms-of-political-corruption-and-only-one-is-really-illegal/
Waste and fraud has been defined by our government since at least Reagan, as being practiced exclusively by dark skinned people in big cities, mostly in the east.
Waste and fraud as practised by white men in suits and expensive cowboy boots is called business, and is by definition, to be admired as the efficient workings of the free-market.
I assume an estimate of how much we were shortchanged will be produced and the oil companies will pay back what they owe no problem. I expect the Koch brothers to pay their fair share of taxes no problem/s
I hope someone gets GAO to closely at what is going on with industrial wind and solar on public lands under Salazar as Interior Secretary, too. Instead of requiring responsible energy project siting, Salazar has fast-tracked many projects that are in terribly damaging locations. Then, taxpayers support these projects through tens or hundreds of millions of dollar per-project loan guarantees – often to foreign energy entities who actually are behind the local LLCs that front for them. These poorly sited projects place great strain on ecosystems and wildlife that are already stressed. So taxpayers then get to pour more funds into trying to keep species viable. There is a lot of torn up and degraded BLM Interior land where it is windy enough or sunny enough for energy projects. But interior just won’t act to prevent sprawl.
“The results of the study may reveal the potential for greater revenues to the federal government. GAO also reported in 2010 that neither BLM nor MMS had consistently met their statutory requirements or agency goals for oil and gas production verification inspections. Without such verification, Interior cannot provide reasonable assurance that the public is collecting its legal share of revenue from oil and gas development on federal lands and waters.”
I am so shocked by this. You mean to tell me that the Deepwater Horizon environmental and economic disaster was preventable? /s
Republicans and many Democrats, too, seem to hate it when the government collects money it’s actually owed. The corruption at the agencies overseeing American extraction industries is as obvious as was the corruption in the bureaus that oversaw “protections” for American Indians.
Who in Congress has done any oversight, either of what we collect as income from publicly owned lands or what we spend? The most egregious failure has got to be Joe Lieberman’s failure to oversee how one dime was spent by DHS, or to oversee anything else it’s done or failed to do.