Saturday, December 09, 2006
Another salvo in the fight against corporate welfare
The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Resources Committee has indicated a strong desire to investigate lax collection of oil & gas royalties and new legislation to close loopholes that gives away billions of dollars to the oil and gas industry.
“The Interior Department has a background of mismanagement, to put it mildly, in the collection of these royalties,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, a Democrat who will become chairman of the House Resources Committee next year.This is good. For too long they have taken from public lands and kept all the profit to a few.
Mr. Rahall said he planned a sweeping investigation of the Interior Department’s enforcement of royalty payments as well as the possible repeal of a 10-year-old law that allows energy companies drilling in deep coastal waters to avoid billions of dollars in payments.
“The oil and gas royalties system has never worked,” asserts a written summary of the committee’s top goals in the new Congress. “Instead it has proven to be a form of corporate welfare that has enabled oil and gas producers to undercut payments due the American people.”
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