Minerals Management Service

Floor Speech

MINERALS MANAGEMENT SERVICE -- (Senate - September 12, 2008)

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, 2 days ago I came to the floor of the Senate to describe specifically the horror story of misconduct and mismanagement at the Minerals Management Service. Today, this morning, in coffee shops across the country, in addition to talking about the pain at getting clobbered by these gasoline prices at the pump, a lot of Americans are wondering how can it possibly be that in these Federal energy development programs, the tax money of the American people is being used to prop up sweetheart contracting, flagrant conflict of interest violations, drug abuse, apparently all kinds of sexual escapades, and lots more.

I have been trying to clean up these royalty programs for more than 5 years. I stood right in this spot 2 years ago and spent almost 5 hours trying to force a vote here in the Senate to clean up these royalty programs.

Some of these royalty problems, of course, began when the price of oil was $19 a barrel. The day that I spoke at length to try to force a vote, the price of oil was $70 a barrel. Of course, for quite some time the price of oil has been $110, $120, $130--of course 8, 10, 12 times what it was when this program began.

The Bush administration has repeatedly indicated that they would take care of these problems. We have had Secretary Kempthorne, for example, in the Energy Committee even 19 months ago essentially saying they would get on top of the program.

I came to the floor today because I would like to describe how it looks as though once again the Department of Interior is especially interested in trying to keep the Congress from stepping in and taking bold action to try to drain the swamp. For example, the statement the Secretary of Interior made--I brought it to the floor--came out yesterday. It states, for example:

The conduct of a few has cast a shadow on an entire agency.

That is not what the inspector general said about this program. The inspector general didn't talk, as Secretary Kempthorne did, about the conduct of a few. What the inspector general said--I will just read it:

We discovered that, between 2002 and 2006, nearly one-third of the entire royalty-in-kind staff socialized with and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies with whom the royalty-in-kind program was conducting official business.

Let's unpack that for a minute. Secretary Kempthorne has said repeatedly that we are only talking about the conduct of a few people and offered up once again, just in the last 24 hours, an argument clearly designed to keep the Congress from stepping in next week and finally draining the swamp at the Royalty-in-Kind Program. The inspector general found that there were gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions from major oil and gas companies. The inspector general called it a textbook example of improperly receiving gifts from prohibited sources. And then the inspector general said:

When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse.

They found a culture at this program of ethical disregard--substance abuse, promiscuity. They go on and on to talk about an entire program. They certainly do not talk about how these problems took place in the past. They talk about how this is an ongoing problem that certainly is not going to be taken care of, in my view, as Secretary Kempthorne has suggested in the past, with one of his kind of ethics training programs. There are going to have to be substantial changes. I am very hopeful that finally, after the Congress has gotten report after report about the problems at this agency, the Senate will not accept the argument from Secretary Kempthorne that once again the Congress ought to just trust the agency to take care of things on its own.

Let me outline just a few of the areas that I hope the Senate would consider in changing these flagrant abuses at Minerals Management.

It seems to me, first, that this program, the Royalty-in-Kind Program, should be suspended until the Secretary certifies that each of the inspector general's ethical and business recommendations is implemented.

That strikes me as pretty obvious. You have all of these problems. It has been documented in report after report after report. The Secretary has come to the committee, and said he would take care of it. It has not been done. It would seem to me that you suspend this program until the Secretary certifies that the recommendations from the inspector general are implemented.

Second, I am sure people listening to this say, ``hello,'' when you make this particular recommendation. It is time to get rigorous audits back in the Minerals Management Royalty Program. You think to yourself, how can it be that millions of dollars go in and out the door in these programs? There have been problems documented again and again in these inspector general reports and they still do not have rigorous audits. So that is the second thing the Senate ought to require with respect to this program.

I personally would favor a limited continuation of the Royalty-in-Kind Program to a fixed term, choose 1 year, 2 years, and then it would be sunset unless it would be reauthorized. This would be a process that would make sure the program either gets fixed and the Senate comes away convinced that it works or the program goes away. So I would hope the Senate would look at that.

Finally, I think it is worth noting that the Minerals Management Service is the only major bureau within the Interior that does not have a Senate-confirmed director. It is my view that the head of the Minerals Management Service, particularly at a time such as this, when the very programs in its charge, and the programs the Congress is looking to expand next week, that the head of the Minerals Management Service should be a Senate-confirmed position. This way it would be possible for the Senate Energy Committee--and I know Senator Nelson has a great interest in this as well--would have a say in who the next director of that office is, and the Energy Committee would be in a position to hold that individual accountable.

As I have indicated, the Minerals Management Service is the only major bureau within Interior that does not have a Senate-confirmed director. It is obvious you cannot wave your wand and legislatively fix every ethical consideration imaginable. But it would seem to me, given the blockbuster nature of this inspector general's report, and the tenacious work that has been done by Earl Devaney there, that Congress would be negligent, that Congress would be more than remiss, that Congress would be negligent to not step in next week when we are working on these very programs--there is discussion of expanding them dramatically--to not step in and make sure the taxpayers' interests are protected.

This is not a question of whether you are for drilling or against drilling here. Senators will have differences of opinion surely on that. But as Senator Nelson has said over a period of years, and I have said over a period of years, this ought to be something every Member of the Senate would agree on.

I think back to 2 years ago, and I got up in the morning and did not expect to be on this floor for 5 hours trying to force a vote to change these programs. It was clear that if we had gotten the votes, we would have won. That was when the price of oil was $70 a barrel, not $100 a barrel; $100 often seems reasonable these days to people given the shellacking they are taking.

But the Congress will have a vigorous debate next week on a host of issues with respect to energy policy. What I would hope is that 100 Members of the Senate would say, given what the inspector general has said, No. 1, given the fact that Secretary Kempthorne has again in his statement yesterday--and I read this specifically--suggested that we are talking about a few individuals:

The conduct of a few has cast a shadow on an entire agency.

That is not what the inspector general said. One-third of the employees in this program, one-third, colleagues, were involved in this. Given what the inspector general has said, given the facts that the agency has repeatedly said it would clean up these programs, and it has not done it, that under the leadership of Chairman Bingaman of the Energy Committee, he always works closely with the ranking minority member, our colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, that finally next week the Congress, on a bipartisan basis, end these disgraceful practices that have been documented repeatedly in these independent reports.

If the Congress does not step in and finally adopt specific measures to hold this agency accountable, I believe when the headlines are no longer the topic of kitchen table conversation, I believe what will happen, certainly regrettably in this administration, we will not see the changes needed to protect the American people.

I do not see how you can make a case for playing down this set of problems that has been so well documented. I hope all Members of the Senate, all 100 Senators, will back our efforts next week to clean up this program.

I yield the floor.

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