[Skitterpop]

We are truly in the glory age of spins..... an outright corrupt act is labeled a mistake. On and on it goes....




September 14, 2006
Royalty mistake gives Big Oil windfall
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - An official overseeing oil leasing says he was directed in the 1990s to remove a provision concerning royalty payments, leading to a financial windfall to oil companies, the Interior Department's inspector general said yesterday. He also unleashed a broad rebuke of his department's record on ethics.
Inspector General Earl Devaney testified at a House hearing that the leasing official's claim could not be verified despite a lengthy investigation and a polygraph test, which the official passed. He said three people were implicated by the official but all denied making such a directive, and one also passed a polygraph.
Devaney, who has been the department's internal watchdog for seven years, said he could not say whether anyone will be disciplined over the oil royalty mistake. It involved thousands of leases issued in 1998-99 without a section that would have required royalty payments if oil prices reached a certain level.
He contended that midlevel department officials covered up the mistake for five years. Devaney also lashed out at what he said was the department's failure to deal with ethical missteps and conflicts of interest.
''Short of a crime, anything goes at the highest level of the Department of Interior,'' he said. ''Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials - taking the form of appearances of impropriety, favoritism and bias - have been routinely dismissed with a promise of not to do it again.'' He said his office's recommendations usually were ignored. In testimony before the House Government Reform's energy subcommittee, Devaney described a meeting with former Interior Secretary Gale Norton about questionable ethical conduct by a senior official.