Nick Snow
Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 25 -- Twenty-two US senators have asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the US Minerals Management Service is fully collecting federal oil and gas royalties from leases on public and Indian lands.
"In this time of rising oil and gas prices, the program has been the subject of criticism for alleged under-collections resulting in the public not receiving fair value for its mineral resources," said Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chief minority member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the 20 other Senate Democrats and one Republican in a letter.
"It is essential that the US Treasury, the states, and the tribes receive the amounts owed to them for production from federal and tribal leases," they wrote David M. Walker, the GAO's comptroller general, on Jan. 24.
The group asked Walker to answer nine sets of questions within 30 days, including why royalty collections totals from federal lands have not risen at the same rate as oil and gas prices, whether MMS has reduced its number of auditors employed and audits conducted each year, and if the US Department of the Interior agency has adequate resources and funding to do the job.
The senators also asked whether MMS implemented recommendations from a DOI inspector general's report that was critical of its royalty audit process, if deepwater royalty relief provisions have been properly implemented and royalties collected when the oil or gas prices passes the minimum threshold, and the basis for withholding information about royalty payers' specific payments, including what constitutes proprietary information.
Bingaman initially said a day earlier that he would ask the congressional watchdog agency to review MMS oil and gas royalty collections in response to a New York Times story that raised its own questions about the subject.
Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Democrats Daniel K. Akaka (Ha.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Thomas R. Carper (Del.), Mark Dayton (Minn.), Byron L. Dorgan (ND), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), Russell D. Feingold (Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Tim Johnson (SD), John F. Kerry (Mass.), Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ), Carl Levin (Mich.), Robert Menendez (NJ), Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Barack Obama (Ill.), Harry Reid (Nev.), Ken Salazar (Colo.), Charles E. Schumer (NY), and Ron Wyden (Ore.) also signed the letter.
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