Ed Andrews at the NYT did some great investigative pieces a few months back that are likely to bear fruit in the new Congress. He exposed the fact that the government (under Clinton) had given leases to drill on public land, without any royalty provisions. Previous leases had suspended royalty payments if the price of oil was below $34 a barrel, in effect providing some element of insurance to the industry. The new leases eliminated royalties altogether.
The amount of money involved is not huge, about $10 billion over ten years (0.03 percent of projected spending), but it is hard to justify this sort of giveaway to what is currently an incredibly profitable industry. Andrews' article in today's paper indicates that new Congress may take it back.
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