Happy New Year! This year promises to be a challenging and exciting year for oil and gas in Washington. Before getting very far into it, however, let’s take a look at some of 2008’s more entertaining moments in government. We do this early each year with “Watchies,” which get their name from this column.
The first of this year’s citations, a “What Were They Thinking” Watchy, goes to employees of the US Minerals Management Service’s royalty-in-kind program in Denver, who gave new meaning to the phrase “government service” in 2004-06.
Reports prepared for Department of the Interior Insp. Gen. Earl E. Devaney’s investigation described instances where RIK employees helped representatives from producers prepare bids, held outside paying jobs while still on MMS’s payroll, and promoted private enterprises within the office.
Devaney suggested that problems began when the program’s administrators decided to adopt a “business model” approach under which RIK marketers began to act more as if they were part of the private sector, including “effectively opting out of the Ethics in Government Act.” Other current and former MMS employees as well as members of Congress reacted with disgust to a situation an already controversial program simply didn’t need.
Effective lawmakers
A second Watchy is shared by US Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. John E. Peterson (R-Pa.) for their accomplishments before each retired at yearend 2008. Domenici, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, worked hard not only on the 2005 Energy Policy Act but also on the 2006 bill which opened significant new Gulf of Mexico acreage to leasing.
Despite not having a comparable leadership position in the House, Peterson kept bringing Outer Continental Shelf leasing bans to the foreground as oil and gas prices climbed. Gasoline prices breaking the $4/gal barrier last summer probably did more to sway public sentiment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.) may have passed one of the most restrictive OCS access bills ever in response, but the moratoriums still expired on Sept. 30, a prospect inconceivable 3 years earlier to nearly everyone but Peterson.
A clear signal
Finally, an “Unmistakable Signal” Watchy goes to Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah graduate student and environmental activist who disrupted the US Bureau of Land Management’s Dec. 19 oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City by submitting $1.8 million of bids he had no intention of paying.
It’s still not clear if BLM intends to prosecute, or if it can. The agency probably will require prospective bidders to do more than show a picture identification proving they’re at least 21 years old at future sales.
But environmental organizations already have said they intend to press for more stringent oil and gas regulation. DeChristopher’s stunt showed how far some individuals will go. Obama administration appointees will be hard-pressed to reach workable compromises.
