Smell Something Foul? It's the Natural Gas Producers

[The Whiskey Priest]

While the public is being soaked with higher heating bills this winter, the companies that extracted $60 billion of natural gas from public lands has shorted the taxpayer by approximately $700 million dollars in royalty payments.

It would seem that the Bush and Congress cut them a great deal on royalty payments, they can report a smaller number to the Department of Interior than they report to their shareholders. Bush has even gone so far as to curtail auditing enforcement that would turn up cheating of the looser rules.

God, if only we had a government that was as concerned about the citizens as they are about the oil companies and corporations.

Well write those checks for those expensive heating bills and remember you may be eating Kibbles n Bits, but the CEO of Shell is feeding Foie Gras to his cat.

For the love of God, someone strike a match that stinks!


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/politics/23leases.html?th&emc=th

[MadHound]

1. If you can afford to do so at all,

Buy yourself a woodstove, either external or internal. Energy prices are going to go nowhere but up, and by using this alternative you can protect yourself from such price shocks, and screw the natural gas corporations in the process.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Kibbles n Bits? Are you kidding?

Have you seen the price of that stuff?

Go for the bag one shelf down..it's like half the price. You could feast!

[wishlist]

3. For those who can't get NYTimes, here is another link

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/3604860.html

"WASHINGTON - At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extract more than $60 billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.

If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-month investigation by the New York Times has found.

But an often Byzantine set of federal regulations, largely shaped and fiercely defended by the energy industry itself, allowed companies producing natural gas to provide the Interior Department with much lower sales prices — the crucial determinant for calculating government royalties — than they reported to their shareholders.

As a result, the nation's taxpayers — collectively, the biggest owner of U.S. oil and gas reserves — have missed much of the recent energy bonanza."