Interior Department
ORG
Interior Interior Department
The Interior Department denied Wednesday that it collected hundreds of millions of dollars less than it should have last year from companies that pump oil and gas on federal land. But officials also told House members that the government would let companies avoid billions of dollars in royalty payments over the next five years on oil and gas produced in publicly owned coastal waters. But one Congressional analyst noted that even if the Interior Department's new calculations were correct, royalties would have climbed only 24 percent at a time when prices rose more than 50 percent. The Interior Department denied that they collected hundreds of millions of dollars less than it should have last year from companies that pump oil and gas on federal land. But officials also told the House members that the government would let companies avoid billions of dollars in royalty payments over the next five years on oil and gas produced in publicly owned coastal waters. More surprisingly, an Interior official told lawmakers that the break in royalty payments was apparently a result of inadvertent mistakes on leases awarded in the late 1990's for sites in the Gulf of Mexico.