Monday, December 04, 2006

Oil and Gas Royalties

There is a story in the Journal Business Outlook today about how the Federal Mineral Service has sent over $500 million dollars to the State of New Mexico this year for its share of oil and gas royalties on Federal land within the state. The story has a picture of Pete Domenici for some reason. Why not Senator Bingaman or one of the other delegation? Well, I wonder if the Journal will use Pete's picture if they get around to picking up stories on the failure of the bush administration to properly collect royalities in the first place. There are hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected royalties that the bush Interior Department has not collected. That is now the subject of lawsuits by federal auditors wo say they were fired for trying to pursue those collections. This should be a wake up call for New Mexico because some of that money would be coming into state coffers. Will Pete Domenici press for that? Or will his oil and gas donors be awarded with silence from him?

I am off to a Wyss Foundation meeting in Tucson for a couple of days. Bobbi and Noelle will show up there this afternoon from Phoenix where they spent the weekend together and we will attend the always fun dinner tonight.

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