Big Oil gets caught playing dirty. Let's see where the oil slick leads next.
Randall Luthi, head of the Minerals Management Service, is a former Republican Congressman from Wyoming and a former aide to Dick Cheney.
Before the sex scandal came to light, Big Oil got called out for not paying for oil taken from public lands. The agency responsible? The Minerals Management Service. Unpaid oil royalties were the subject of a suit brought by a former auditor at the Bush Interior Department as documented by the New York Times in 2006.
Created in 1849 to manage the nation's publicly owned natural resources, from national forests to parks and waterways, the Interior Department oversees timber, grazing, mining and oil drilling operations over many tens of millions of acres. And while the agency has often tried to increase drilling and mining under Democrats and Republicans alike, current and former officials say the Bush administration elevated that goal above almost all of the department's other mandates.Mr. Maxwell says his frustrations with the Interior Department escalated after the Bush administration took office in 2001. The Interior Department's top priorities became increasing domestic oil and gas production, offering more incentives to drillers in the Gulf of Mexico and pushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other wilderness areas to drilling. The department trimmed spending on enforcement and cut back on auditors, and sped up approvals for drilling applications.
Virginia's Republican legislators like Frank Wagner and Congresswoman Thelma Drake demagogue the offshore drilling issue by touting its benefits to the state through royalties.
State Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, argues that drilling offshore could generate as much as $200 million annually in royalties for Virginia's treasury.
The royalties that new drilling would generate also would provide a multibillion-dollar boost to the development of alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and to energy conservation, Drake said during Friday's session. That means more jobs for Americans even if gas prices don't drop, she says.
What good does more drilling do if the royalties aren't collected and the Bush/Cheney administration is partying with the oil companies instead of watching the public purse?
The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with - and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from - oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney, whose office spent more than two years and $5.3 million on the investigation.