Uncollected revenue is like burning money.
As US politicians continue to cry for fiscal austerity and weaker industry oversight, keep this next one in mind: As New York Times reports the Department of Interior has done such a poor job keeping track of how much oil and natural gas has been produced from public lands that the people have lost billions of dollars in revenue…
Check out the NYT article for the whys and wherefores of this, but take this quote as a indicative of how muddled things are:
Outdated technologies, poor interagency communication and a 15-year old royalty relief law have contributed to the loss of tens of billions of dollars…Crucially, Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,
Regulation and Enforcement does not have access to industry real-time data on production and well activity in the Gulf of Mexico, making it difficult to determine accurate revenue figures and efficiently allocation inspections resources.
