Oil and Gas Royalties
Legislation | Documents/Reports | Links | Press Releases
Congresswoman Maloney, a long-time critic of waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs, has battled Big Oil for nearly 15 years to ensure that taxpayers are paid their fair share of royalties from oil companies that drill on federal lands.
Maloney has been a leader in efforts to revise the Interior Department's oil-valuation rules. At her urging in 1997, the House Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology held two hearings looking into the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) royalty-collection efforts which were instrumental in getting MMS to re-write its oil-valuation rules. She also worked with the General Accounting Office and the House Resources Committee to bring about stronger oversight of MMS. Representative Maloney led the successful effort in 2000 to force oil companies to pay the federal government fair market value instead of lower “posted prices” set by the industry. Because of her advocacy and the efforts of other good government proponents, in the spring of 2000, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service released its final oil valuation rule, which resulted in the federal government collecting millions more annually in oil and gas revenues.
Maloney has also been an outspoken critic of the deeply flawed Royalty-in-Kind program, which was established by the Bush Administration as a pilot program in 2001. The program would allow companies that extract oil and gas on federal lands to pay the government "in kind," with barrels of oil and natural gas, instead of in traditional cash payments, which would now cost the companies more under the 2000 oil valuation rule. As a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Maloney helped to provide stringent oversight of the program from its first days until it was ultimately phased out by the Obama Administration in 2009.
Maloney continues to work for increased accuracy of royalties collected. She is the author of a bill to help ensure that the federal government uses the most accurate methods to collect royalties.
Legislation
06/21/2011 - H.R. 2260, Study of Ways to Improve the Accuracy of the Collection of Federal Oil, Condensate, and Natural Gas Royalties Act of 2011 [112th Congress]
01/12/07 - H.R.435, Study of Ways to Improve the Accuracy of the Collection of Federal Oil, Condensate, and Natural Gas Royalties Act of 2007 [1110th Congress]
05/18/06 - H.AMDT.838, Maloney Amendment on Auditing Funding [109th Congress]
06/21/01 - H.AMDT.102, Maloney Amendment on Royalty-In-Kind Sales [107th Congress]
03/08/01 - H.R.962, Low Income Energy Reinvestment Act [107th Congress]
06/14/00 - H.AMDT.801, Maloney Amendment on Royalty-in-Kind Sales [106th Congress]
05/21/98 - H.R.3932, Federal Oil Royalty Protection Act of 1998 [105th Congress]
03/18/97 - H.R.1106, Royalty Settlement Reform Act of 1997 [105th Congress]
Documents
More on Oil and Gas Royalties
WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, greeted with concern today’s release of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on oil and gas leases on federal lands.
WASHINGTON, DC – In a time when the federal deficit is skyrocketing, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14) has introduced a bill which could help increase payments to the government from energy leases under Federal onshore and offshore lands by ensuring an accurate accounting of the resources extracted from those lands.
WASHINGTON, DC - Members of Congress are expressing concern about the new federal program for collecting mineral royalties owed on Tribal and Indian lands. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), joined by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), George Miller (D-CA), Edward Markey (D-MA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), and Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), have asked Johnnie Burton, Director of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), for answers (letter to Burton: http://maloney.house.gov/documents/govreform/oil/20060403ltrMMS.pdf). MMS’s new program, which was initiated in 2001, focuses on compliance reviews of company royalty reports rather than full audits conducted under U.S. Government Auditing Standards. Compliance desk reviews are also being used for collecting royalties owed federal taxpayers and State governments.