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NATURAL GAS ROYALTIES: THE FACTS, THE

REMEDIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 1, 2006

Serial No. 109–251

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND RESOURCES

DARRELL E. ISSA, California, Chairman

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, NORTH CAROLINA

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

DIANE E. WATSON, California

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

TOM LANTOS, California

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. BRADY, Staff Director

DAVE SOLAN, Professional Staff Member

LORI GAVAGHAN, Clerk

RICHARD BUTCHER, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 1, 2006 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Cruickshank, Walter, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Minerals Management

Service, Department of the Interior ............................................................ 13

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cruickshank, Walter, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Minerals Management

Service, Department of the Interior, prepared statement of ..................... 24

Issa, Hon. Darrell E., a Representative in Congress from the State of

California, prepared statement of ................................................................ 3

(1)

NATURAL GAS ROYALTIES: THE FACTS, THE

REMEDIES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:07 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Darrell E. Issa (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Issa, Watson, and Higgins.

Staff present: Larry Brady, staff director; Lori Gavaghan, legislative clerk; Thomas Alexander, counsel; Dave Solan, Ph.D. and Ray

Robbins, professional staff members; Alexandra Teitz, minority

counsel; Richard Butcher, minority professional staff member; and

Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mr. ISSA. Good afternoon. A quorum being present, I call this

hearing to order.

This subcommittee is conducting a fact-finding hearing to investigate the implementation of the Federal Natural Gas Royalty Payment Program.

Recent news reports suggest that the Government may be unable

to collect anywhere from $7 billion to $28 billion in natural gas royalties from leases of Federal lands and waters.

This is particularly troublesome at a time when natural gas companies are continuing to post record earnings.

There are several areas of concern, the first is whether some gas

companies have failed to fulfill their contractual obligations to

make royalty payments to the Department of the Interior.

There is confusion surrounding figures the industry has supplied

to the Interior Department, the accounting methods of the Interior

Department, and the degree of oversight provided by Minerals

Management Service [MMS].

On this basis alone, the U.S. Government may have been under- paid $700 million worth of royalties in 2005.

Second, there is concern that the United States could be excluded

from billions of royalties resulting from the Deep Water Royalty

Relief Act. The act was enacted to provide an incentive to companies to explore and extract oil and natural gas from the U.S. waters. This came at a time when oil and natural gas prices were low,

and the interest in deep water drilling was lacking.

The act gives the Secretary of the Interior the authority to enter

into leases with oil and gas companies with defined volume suspenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:39 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\41850.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
2

sions and price thresholds so that companies can recover their capital investments before paying royalties on the gross revenues.

Again, this was at a time in which prices were low.

During 1998 and 1999, however, these critical price thresholds

were not included as terms of the leases, thereby allowing companies to recoup their capital investments long before the expiration

of volume suspensions.

As these wells are now beginning to reap billions in gross revenues because of record gas prices, the effect of the price thresholdfree language is coming to fruition.

As a result, the United States may be unable to claim part of the

billions in gross revenues for the years 1998 and 1999.

The Department of Interior and the MMS have been very cooperative in responding to all of our requests for information. They assure me—and I emphasize this—they assure me that they can factually explain the situation and that there is no $700 million shortfall.

However, the $700 million is not the only issue. The focus here

today is also on the more critical issue: the 1998 and 1999 leases

and the billions that the U.S. Government may be precluded from

collecting. That is why we are here today and have only one witness to establish the fact in this public forum.

The subcommittee will be diligent in our oversight responsibilities, depending upon the information we find here today. We may

followup with hearings that are focused on more specific issues

that need further analysis. We may focus on legislation to correct

errors that we discover here today or in future hearings.

It is our responsibility to ensure that royalties are collected according to the law and the intent of Congress. I look forward to the

hearing, Dr. Cruickshank’s testimony today.

I ask unanimous consent that the briefing memo prepared by the

subcommittee staff be inserted into the record as well as all relevant materials.

I would now yield to the ranking gentlewoman from California

for her opening statement, Ms. Watson.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Darrell E. Issa follows:]

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Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And I am sorry

I am just now arriving—conflicts. But I want to commend you for

scheduling this hearing today on the subject matter, and in the 5

years since the Bush administration has taken office, neither the

Government Reform Committee nor the Resources Committee has

held a single oversight hearing on the management of the Federal

Royalty Program or on the validity of the regulations governing collection of natural gas royalties.

So I want to thank the Deputy Director of MMS for attending the

first hearing of what should be several meetings to discuss the

issue.

Indeed with the gas and oil industry recording the largest revenues in history, Congress must take a hard look at the reasons for

royalty relief. The fact of the matter is the policy of royalty relief

that the Congress passed was an unwise policy. But the oil companies convinced this Congress to do so, and they have convinced the

administration to allow it to continue.

President Bush was quoted in the April 9, 2005 New York Times, ‘‘I will tell you with $55 oil, we don’t need incentives to oil and gas

companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives.’’

The Bush administration recently acknowledged that the further

expansion of their oil royalty relief program was not necessary. Unfortunately, President Bush did not go to such an extent that he

insisted that royalty relief be taken out of the energy bill he just

signed.

The American taxpayer is the victim in this situation. I understand that there is an accounting controversy surrounding the

math that the New York Times used to calculate a $70 million—

excuse me—$700 million, in other words, $7 billion pool of uncollected royalties from the oil and gas companies.

So let us get down to transparency and utilize the proper numbers. Why is there an unwillingness to allow a fair and accurate

exchange of numbers between government and private industry?

Has the manipulation of Enron taught us anything?

Moreover, the bottom line is those companies believed, as the administration has said, that at a minimum, they were not going to

get relief from the payment of the rent to the taxpayers if oil was

over $35 a barrel.

As we all know, the world price of oil today is hovering around

$60 a barrel, and recently it has been on a high and as high as

$70. Now, how can we allow companies to exploit public assets and

then charge us extraordinary amounts to use the products derived

from those assets?

The American public is having a difficult time heating their

homes and putting gas in their cars. The country is at an all-time

deficit. Projections from the New York Times place uncollected royalties at $65 billion in the next 5 years, utilizing the plan proposed

by the Department of Labor.

Leases without any royalty mechanism are driving the largest

revenue losses. Americans deserve an answer to the currently inexplicable leases issued in 1998 and 1999 that do not contain price

thresholds at all.

Good public policy demands that Congress conduct real oversight

and protect the taxpayers’ interests.

12

Recently, Representative Markey introduced legislation to prevent any future royalty holidays for the oil companies. The legislation is designed to seek and direct the Minerals Management Service to renegotiate these leases so that it does include the provision

of a minimum of a trigger, hopefully promoting a better royalty policy than that.

The bill dictates that companies who do not want to cooperate

with renegotiation should be barred from future bids on the Outer

Continental Shelf.

I am interested to hear from the Department of the Interior if

this is a step in the right direction. To their credit, some of the

major oil companies are struggling that, in fact, they do owe the

royalties and that there is a trigger mechanism.

Unfortunately, Kerr-McGee and apparently some other companies have decided that they are going to challenge the whole law.

They believe they are not obligated to pay any of these royalties;

also that there is no trigger in this law.

So, Mr. Chairman, I again want to commend you for your leadership in bringing this issue to our subcommittee.

I look forward to the testimony today and subsequent hearings,

and I am as dedicated as you are in providing strong leadership

and advocacy on behalf of the American public and in particular

our drivers in California who have an extra appendage and that is

their automobiles.

So, again, thank you, and I yield back.

Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentlelady. I would note for the record that

as far as our staff can determine, the first letter that was received

and part of the impetus for this hearing here today came from a

letter from the minority side, and it is the first that we believe we

received in those 5 years you spoke about—on January 23, 2006,

calling on both Chairman Pombo and Chairman Davis to look into

these issues. I wanted to make sure that credit was given where

credit was due. I am delighted to be doing this. To be honest, I

looked at those New York Times articles and I looked at this request from the minority in determining that this was an issue that

should be quickly scheduled, and we moved what was not on the

agenda ahead so that it could, in fact, be done right now. I hope

that this will be the first of many.

I would like to now yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New

York, who also is very engaged in this issue and even has his own

legislation.

Mr. HIGGINS. I will waive an opening statement.

Mr. ISSA. The gentleman waives an opening statement. So with

that, we can get to the meat of this.

Dr. Cruickshank, I am going to be brief and then give you all the

time that you need. But I would like to mention that your Ph.D.

couldn’t be more appropriate, in that your education in geological

sciences from Cornell and from Penn State and your mineral—Doctorate in Mineral Economics. Boy, we are talking minerals and

money here today—couldn’t be more on task. I note that you have

been on the job since April 8, 2002, when you were designated Deputy Director of Minerals Management Service. I appreciate the administration providing you. I appreciate your being here today.

13

Before I swear you in, I would ask unanimous consent that your

entire testimony be placed in the record in addition to any materials that you may supply, including your PowerPoint presentation.

Without objection, so ordered.

It is the rule of this committee that all Members—or certainly all

people testifying and any who may be on your staff that may give

you advice, guidance, or may ultimately answer a question also be

sworn in.

So I would ask that you and anyone fitting that description

please rise and take the oath. Note there is only one.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. ISSA. Let the record show an answer in the affirmative.

Thank you very much, and, as we talked about earlier—please

have a seat. I understand that your testimony will be supported by

PowerPoint, we will then take questions and answers, and without

objection, take what time you need to do both.

STATEMENT OF WALTER CRUICKSHANK, PH.D., DEPUTY DIRECTOR, MINERALS MANAGEMENT SERVICE, DEPARTMENT

OF THE INTERIOR

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of

the committee for this opportunity to appear today to discuss the

various issues that have been raised concerning oil and gas royalties over the last month.

You have noted the plan. I would like to follow. I have a

PowerPoint presentation responding to the initial New York Times

article of January 23rd. And after walking through that, I would

then like to give some additional remarks on Deep Water Royalty

Relief—the history and mechanics of that program and the issue of

price thresholds and where we are today.

I will start with the PowerPoint. There are 5 issues raised in

that initial article that I would like to address. The 5 issues include

the first, which is the statement that we could have received $700

million more in royalties had we based royalties on larger market

prices; the issue of different prices being reported to MMS and to

the SEC. The third issue noted that natural gas prices are higher

now than in 2001, but natural gas royalties are less. I would like

to go on to the reasons that has occurred. And the fourth issue

raised in the article was whether our valuation rules are aggressive

enough in seeking to collect royalties on the right basis, and finally

discuss the issue of our audit program.

So I will turn to each of those in turn.

But first, a little bit of background on royalties. Royalty is the

public share of the value of minerals produced from Federal lands.

For oil and gas leases, the royalty rate is generally 121⁄2 percent

as a minimum royalty rate in statute, but there are authorities to

charge higher royalty rates or to reduce royalties below that 121⁄2

percent on occasion.

The value, for royalty purposes, is based on the value of the production at or near the lease. And that is based on 85 years of practice, of statute, of regulations, of provisions in the lease terms

themselves and of judicial decisions.

The basic royalty equation is the value of the royalty production

times the volume sold times the royalty rate. The value of royalty

14

production again is based at the lease, though, and often then does

not reflect the price at a market center that may be some distance

from the lease.

In those cases, where you are selling at some distance far from

the lease, you are allowed to deduct your costs of transporting the

production from the lease to the point of sale.

So the value for royalty purposes is the market price, minus

what you are allowed to deduct for your cost of transporting to the

point of sale, and for natural gas, you may also take deductions for

processing that gas to take out royalty bearing liquids. I would like to start by addressing the issue of the potential $700

million shortfall in royalty collections.

That number arose out of data on our Web site, but the numbers

were used in a way that it was really not consistent with what the

data on the Web site contained.

What the New York Times did was basically use the data on the

Web site to calculate an average value for natural gas produced in

fiscal year 2005, compare that to other market prices, to come up

with the $700 million shortfall.

But our data on the Web is really not tied to the dates or month

of production. Rather, it is based on when we receive payment. Our

royalty management program is one that is charged with collecting

money and disbursing money, and the data that we put on our Web

site really tracks the cash-flows, if you will—the money, when we

receive it and when we pay it out, rather than tying it to the year

in which it was actually produced.

What typically happens in the oil and gas industry is that there

are a lot of adjustments after the initial royalty payments. Royalties are generally paid 30 days after the month of production. But

it could be many months, and in some cases years before those

numbers are actually locked in stone by the companies. There can

be a variety of reasons for this—related to the number of partners

on a field, the number of fields tying into a pipeline, the number

of pipelines tying into processing plants. And at each stage, the

owner of the pipeline or the processing plant needs to allocate the

production volumes back to the various entities. It often takes quite

a long time for companies to really finalize what the proper volumes were on which royalties are based.

In addition, when we take compliance actions against companies,

we are telling them also that they need to correct the reports that

they submitted previously.

Under the Royalty Simplification and Fairness Act of 1996, companies are allowed by statue 6 years to make adjustments to their

initial reports on royalties.

What we find is that the data that we have for any fiscal year

often includes a lot of reports for prior fiscal years. The 2005 data

that the New York Times used included by volume 24 percent of

the transactions were from prior years, when prices were lower.

And as a result, that tended to bias the price that was calculated

using that data.

This slide shows the New York Times approach. They took the

sales volume and sales value on our Web site to calculate the $5.62

average value, compared that to the Energy Information Administration’s wellhead price for the same time period, of $6.45, and baVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:39 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\41850.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
15

sically that price difference applied to the production volumes, and

the royalty rate comes up with the $700 million difference.

Now, what we did is we recognize that the sales volumes used

in that calculation included by volume 24 percent transactions from

prior years. And so we removed those years and recalculated the

numbers using the same method as the New York Times, but including only those volumes sold—produced and sold in 2005, so

that we were calculating an average value for 2005 production

rather than an average value that encompassed several years.

When you do that, when you remove those prior year adjustments, you end up calculating an average value reported to MMS

of $6.59 rather than the $5.62 that the New York Times reported.

That average value is above the benchmark the Times used of $6.45. There really is no price differential between the market price

and the values reported to MMS; therefore, there is no $700 million

shortfall.

Mr. ISSA. Just to interrupt briefly.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Yes.

Mr. ISSA. Would it be amenable to you—and you can continue

through your PowerPoint, but I think on behalf of both the majority and the minority staff if the information you have as complete

as possible for as many years that shows a pattern of accrual versus cash basis, which is what I understand you are saying. If you

could provide us with the data so that both sides of the staff could

independently look at the materials that would probably be good.

I think as much as I accept how this problem occurred, ultimately

I think either somebody on your staff working with the majority

and minority staff or the raw data, one way or the other, and the

former is preferred, would allow both of us to get a comfort level—

and I take you at your word—that this is just the difference between the ease of posting cash versus the complexity of providing

the accrual system in real time to a Web site. But I think since this

is not primarily what this hearing is about today, but we do have

to have a comfort level that all moneys owed are being collected

that we could do a lot of this offline—if that is acceptable?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. That is fine. We will be happy to make that

data available.

And as you noted, because of these adjustments that we get

every month, posting accrual data would be difficult because we

would have to be constantly changing it.

Mr. ISSA. I understand. Please continue.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. I do want to caveat the numbers I just gave.

Because of these adjustments, the numbers we used for 2005 clearly will change over time, as companies adjust their 2005 reports

over the coming couple of years. So the $6.59 represents a snapshot

of the data as we have it today, and that may vary somewhat as

we get additional information that is more representative of the

value that we are paid than the $5.62, which encompasses an average over several years as opposed to just 2005 sales.

The second issue raised in the New York Times had to do with

the difference in values reported to MMS and to the Securities and

Exchange Commission.

The difference really is the basis of the different requirements of

the two organizations. But the prices are not inconsistent. SEC reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:39 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\41850.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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quires companies to report the average gross sales price of all their

final sales within the country.

This represents a composite of their sales from Federal leases,

State leases, private lands, and it is a mix of sales at the lease, at

market centers, and in some cases farther downstream, closer to

the end users.

In addition, SEC does not allow companies to take any deductions for transportation or processing costs from the prices reported

to SEC.

For MMS, we also are receiving a variety of prices that get averaged together. Some of these sales values are from sales at the

lease, where transportation is netted out before the value is determined.

In other cases, we are receiving reports of prices from the market

centers, and the transportation deductions are taken elsewhere.

As a result, what you have is different reports for SEC, each

company’s report reflecting its own particular portfolio of sales. For

MMS, you have an aggregate of all companies’ average sales values

from Federal leases, but many of them reported with transportation deducted, which is not the case for SEC.

So you tend to find some variations in the prices simply because

of the different rules about what companies are supposed to report

to the two agencies. The prices are generally consistent with each

other when you focus on similar time periods, but there are variations because of the different portfolios that individual companies

may hold in terms of where their gas comes from and where they

sell it.

The third issue relates to why natural gas royalties are not higher in 2005 than they were in 2001, given that natural gas prices

are so much higher.

The reasons here are several. I am going to walk through 5 reasons in particular, but they basically relate to how the world has

changed from fiscal year 2001 to 2005. There is less gas being produced from Federal leases now than 5 years ago. That gas is coming from different leases, leases that have different royalty rates,

different royalty relief terms, and coming from parts of the country

with different prices.

So I am going to walk through each of these reasons. But what

they will total up to is about $1.3 billion in royalty value. In other

words, if the world did not change between 2001 and 2005 other

than the price of natural gas, we would have expected to see about

$1.3 billion more in royalties than we did see in 2005.

These changes that I am going to talk about are responsible for

about that much difference in the royalties that we collected.

The first reason has to do with just a general decrease in the

amount of natural gas produced from Federal leases over time.

This chart shows that decline between fiscal year 2001 and 2005,

and the difference is about 1 trillion cubic feet in natural gas.

The largest portion of this just reflects the general decline in the

amount of gas being produced from Federal leases over time, but

a significant component as well has to do with shut-ins because of

hurricanes, staring with Hurricane Ivan in 2004, whose effects

were felt well into 2005, as well as 4 other named storms during

2005. We had about 340 billion cubic feet of natural gas that was

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shut in due to hurricanes. That, combined with the general decline

in production from Federal leases, amounts to the 1 trillion cubic

foot decrease in natural gas volumes over time. Using the New York Times benchmark of $6.45, the royalty value of that gas is equivalent to about $884 million, and is the

largest single reason for the change in the amount of natural gas

royalties collected between the 2 years.

The second issue deals with the fact that not all leases are created equal. As I mentioned before, most oil and gas leases have a

one-eighth royalty rate, or 121⁄2 percent. There is one general exception to that, and that are leases in the shallow water Gulf of

Mexico have a royalty rate of 162⁄3 percent, a somewhat higher royalty rate, recognizing that has been very prolific area for natural

gas production for over 50 years, and was able to bear a higher royalty rate.

However, because it has been producing for a long time, there is

just simply not as much natural gas left in the shallow waters of

the Gulf of Mexico. As you can see from the yellow bars on this

chart, production from shallow waters of the Gulf have been falling. That decline actually started in 1990 and has been fairly

steady over time.

Part of that decline has been offset by an increase in production

from deep water Gulf of Mexico leases that have a one-eighth royalty rate. So we have had a shift in the share of production, an

overall decline in production, but then a shift in the share of production from leases with a one-sixth royalty rate to leases with a

lower one-eighth royalty rate.

As a result, the average royalty rate for offshore production has

declined over the last 5 years, from 15.6 percent in 2001 to 15 percent in 2005.

That change in average royalty rate alone amounts to a difference in royalty collections of about $136 million, and this is solely from the fact that we are now getting production from a different

set of leases than we were 5 years ago.

But the shift in production from shallow water to deep water also

is tied to the other issue I will be talking about today, the Deep

Water Royalty Relief Act. I am going to return to this topic shortly

to talk about the history of this act and the price threshold issue,

but for purposes of the PowerPoint, I just want to focus on the fact

that during 2005, there were 247 billion cubic feet of natural gas

produced from Federal leases on which no royalties were paid.

There are two reasons for that, as you have noted. One is that the

leases issued in 1998 and 1999 do not have price thresholds and

so that production has been royalty free. But then on other leases

issued in that time period, between 1996 and 2000, companies have

not paid in spite of price thresholds because they want to challenge

the legality of those thresholds.

As I said, I will return to those issues shortly, but between

those—because of those two reasons, there is about 247 billion

cubic feet of natural gas produced on which no royalties were paid.

If royalties had been paid on that production, it would have been

about $200 million more in royalty collections.

The third reason for this change has to do with greater production on shore. While production from the Outer Continental Shelf

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has declined in natural gas, it has grown on shore, increased by

about 17 percent. And this has been predominantly in the Rocky

Mountain region of the country. There are two issues involved

here. One is that these on shore leases also have a one-eighth royalty rate rather than the higher one-sixth royalty rate, but also the

Rocky Mountain region has generally lower natural gas prices than

the Gulf of Mexico.

This is largely due to the fact that as natural gas production has

grown in the Rockies, the capacity of pipelines to take natural gas

out of the Rockies to other markets has not grown as rapidly. That

is changing. New pipeline capacity is being added, but right now

production has grown more rapidly than the pipeline capacity so

that gas stays in the Rocky Mountain regions and depresses the

price of natural gas that is sold in that area.

The average difference over 5 years between those two regions is

about one dollar per million cubic—per thousand cubic feet of gas.

The combined effect of this shift to on-shore leases with the lower

royalty rate and a lower value, amounts for about $14 million in

royalty collection difference.

The next chart simply illustrates the change in prices between

the two regions based on the market center index prices.

The final reason explaining why royalty collections were less in

2005 than might have otherwise been expected has to do with hurricanes. This is not because of hurricanes being shut in. We have

talked about that already. But this has to do with the fact that

some companies had their royalty payment systems based in New

Orleans. So when Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29th, those

companies were physically unable to make their payments on August 30th and September 30th.

Those payments have since been made, but the money came in

during fiscal year 2006 and are captured in the 2006 data as opposed to the 2005 data. We have gone back and taken a look, and

the money received in 2006 that normally would have been collected in 2005 on natural gas is about $60 million.

So these 5 reasons together, we estimate account for about a $1.3

billion royalty difference. If none of these things had occurred, we

would have collected about $1.3 billion more in royalties because of

the price difference in natural gas. But the world has changed over

the last 5 years and our royalty collections reflect that.

The fourth issue raised in the article has to do with whether our

valuation regulations have been relaxed over the last few years in

terms of the way we collect royalties.

The easiest way to respond to that is to actually take a look at

each of the individual rulemakings that we have made over the last

few years. With each of those rulemakings, we are required to do

an economic analysis that is shared publicly to receive comments

on, and that analysis is supposed to try and estimate what the impact on royalty collections will be from the changes in regulations.

For oil, in 2000 and then again in 2004, we made adjustments

to our Federal oil valuation regulations, which define how royalties

are to be paid on oil. Those rules dealt with changing the basic

valuation, the basic prices that are used for determining value.

The first of those rules was estimate to provide an additional $67

million in royalty collections, based on prices of that day. The modiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:39 Jun 16, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\41850.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
19

fications in 2004 were expected to be revenue neutral; perhaps

raise a little bit of money, but generally thought to be a revenue

neutral change.

With respect to natural gas royalties, the focus there has been

on what companies are allowed to deduct for transportation and

what they are not allowed to deduct. We spent some time trying

to clarify what is deductible and what isn’t. And again, the regulatory analysis for that rule shows that royalty collections will increase as result of the rule changes relative to what they would

have been if we had not made the rule change.

That is true for the Indian Gas Regulation as well, so in general

all of the rulemaking that we have done over the last 5 years on—

for royalty collections for valuing oil and gas for royalty purposes

have resulted in either no change in the amount of royalties collected or increases in the amount of royalties collected and are not

consistent with the idea that we are somehow relaxing the standards on which we are basing royalties.

The fifth issue raised in the article has to do with our audit and

compliance program and how our resources may have changed over

time and how the number of audits we have done has changed over

time.

This page in the presentation shows the basic data. Our Office

of Inspector General has gone over this page, and these numbers

are consistent with what our Inspector General is also reporting on

these issues.

As you can see, the number of audits completed has jumped

around quite a bit, but there really is no apparent trend. The number in 2005 is the highest of the last 5 years, but that, in part, reflects the fact that we had a major initiative in 2005 to try and

close out a lot of very old and dated audits, so that number is a

little higher than we would normally expect to see.

But generally, we have been able to maintain the number of audits that we are starting and working on, and since every audit

takes a different amount of time to complete, the audit completion

data jump around a lot. But there is no trend there in either direction, up or down. We have been able to maintain the number of audits we are doing, and I would note that the audits on this line are

full audits, following the Government Accounting standards, the

Yellow Book standards for conducting audits.

Our funding has gone up for our audit and compliance program

by minor amounts, from $32 million to $35 million over the last 5

years, which we consider to be a pretty good record given the budget times that we are in these days.

What I will note, though, is that the article was correct in noting

that we have fewer auditors working now than we did 5 years ago.

The main reason for that is the growth in our royalty in-kind program. The royalty in-kind program rather than getting our royalties as cash payments from the companies we actually take our

percent share as production. We take the oil or we take the natural

gas, and we sell it ourselves at the market centers for market

prices.

This results in a much easier compliance process. We still have

to go out and make sure the companies gave us the right volume

of oil, but we no longer have to see whether they used the right

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value in calculating royalty—whether they took the right deductions.

The audits are far simpler. There is a lot less to look at.

In 2005, we took about 80 percent of our royalty oil in the Gulf

of Mexico in kind, and we are up to about 30 percent of our natural

gas royalties being taken in kind out of the Gulf of Mexico. These

are substantial volumes, and they have allowed us to shift audit resources away from some of these offshore leases. Some of them

have been moved to compliance for on shore leases, but it is also

allowed us to reduce the number of auditors overall.

Again, this does not reflect any less coverage. It reflects the fact

that royalty in-kind has provided some efficiencies that allow us to

reallocate our resources.

Finally, I would note that the article made mention of an Inspector General report in 2003 that suggested a lot of improvements to

our internal controls over the audit program.

As a result of that report, we completed a 39-item action plan for

improving the audit program. And when we finished that, we

brought in an independent CPA firm to review our audit program,

the same firm that had been critical of our program along the same

lines of the Inspector General a few years before.

That independent review has given us a clean bill of health, an

unqualified opinion with no weaknesses, no reportable conditions,

no management letter—about as good as you can get from an auditor.

So we are comfortable that the issues the IG has raised have all

been fixed.

As of last year, we were able to cover through our compliance

program about 71 percent of the revenues collected for the audit

year we were targeting, which is a very good sample.

And just to close the PowerPoint, I would like to note that the

Government Accountability Office has taken a look at this

PowerPoint. They have been asked to dig into the numbers behind

it, and we shared our work papers with them, and they are preparing a briefing this afternoon. GAO generally agrees with our conclusions here. They have not had time to dig into the raw data

themselves, but they believe our approach in this response is reasonable. They believe our conclusions are correct. They agree with

the reasoning here, though, they have not actually opened on the

exact numbers within this report.

With that, I would now like to turn to the issue of Deep Water

Royalty Relief and briefly talk about the history and purpose of

that act and the price threshold issues with which we are dealing

with today.

The Deep Water Royalty Relief Act was passed in 1995 and for

purposes of the hearing today, there are 2 sections of that act of

importance.

Section 303 of the act authorized the Secretary to issue leases

with royalty relief. This language basically said that the Secretary

could issues leases that provided royalty relief in the form of a volume or value of royalty-free production. Once that volume or value

was produced, royalties would be due on all additional production

after that fact.

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In addition, that section authorized the Secretary to vary relief

based on market prices, and that is the authority for the price

thresholds that limit the applicability of royalty relief when prices

are high.

Section 304 of that act then went on to direct the Secretary to

issue leases using that system, that the Department was required

to issue leases in the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico for all years, 1996

through 2000, with royalty relief, and the act specified the amount

of royalty relief we were to apply. It ranged from 171⁄2 million barrels to 871⁄2 million barrels of oil equivalent.

That section, Section 304, made no reference to price thresholds.

The mechanics of this relief is that the suspension volumes

granted by the act allow that production to come online royalty

free, but once that suspension volume is produced, then royalties

will be paid on all additional production. Where there are price

thresholds on the leases, that limits the applicability of the royalty

relief. When market prices are above the threshold level, royalties

are due on production and that production counts toward the royalty relief volume, the other royalty relief provisions notwithstanding.

The purpose of this act, as you noticed, Mr. Chairman, were to

try and encourage companies to move into an area of the Gulf of

Mexico that was viewed as very high cost and very high risk, but

with substantial potential for new sources of energy. And, as you

noted, this was a time when oil and gas prices were fairly low.

For the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico, the geological concepts and

the technology had not yet been proven for whether there is actually substantial oil and gas there to be found.

The effects of this act were two-fold: one, the relief made leases

very much more valuable than they would have been in the absence of relief and for leases issued between 1996 and 2000, this

increase in value we believe resulted in about $2 billion in bonus

bids, up-front bonus payments for these leases that would not have

been received in the absence of royalty relief.

In addition, oil and gas production from Deep Water has grown

dramatically over time. Since the enactment of the Deep Water

Royalty Relief Act, deep water oil has grown by about 400 percent

and natural gas has grown about 340 percent over that time period.

Today, deep water Gulf of Mexico accounts for about two-thirds

of the oil and over one-third of the natural gas coming from the region.

So it has been a very successful region of the country in terms

of trying to promote additional supplies of oil and natural gas, and

we believe Deep Water Royalty Relief contributed to that success.

When the mandatory provisions of the act expired in 2000, then

we were left simply with Section 303 of the act that gave discretionary authority to issue royalty relief.

At that time, the Department chose to continue royalty relief, but

to scale it back. They eliminated royalty relief in some water

depths and reduced the volumes to 5 to 12 million barrels of oil

equivalent depending on water depth. In addition, all of those

leases were issued with price thresholds, so at today’s market

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prices every deep water lease that is producing—that was issued

from 2000 is paying royalties.

Finally, we come to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which again

made royalty relief mandatory in the Deep Water Gulf of Mexico.

We had been making sale by sale decisions on whether to have royalty relief, but the Energy Policy Act mandated that we continue

that relief for the next 5 years in the Gulf of Mexico. It adopted

the range of royalty relief that we had been using—the 5 to 12 million barrels, but it added an additional tier for deeper water of 16

million barrels of royalty relief.

Finally, that act continued the policy of allowing set carry to set

price thresholds to limit the applicability of royalty relief and that

authority is explicit in the Energy Policy Act.

Turning to price thresholds, as I mentioned, when this act was

originally enacted, we had to sit down and decide how to implement it, and the Secretary at that time determined that we would

have price thresholds on all the leases issued between 1996 and

2000.

But somehow, as you have noted, for the leases issued in 1998

and 1999, those price threshold provisions are not in the lease.

I have looked at all of the decision documents related to lease

sales in that time period, as well as all the lease sale documents

themselves, and what I have concluded is that there was no affirmative decision to take price thresholds out. It was clear in 1996 a

decision was made to have price thresholds as part of the Deep

Water Relief clauses in these leases.

When the Director of MMS and the Assistant Secretary were

asked to make decisions on the lease sales in 1998 and 1999, they

were not asked to change that provision. There is nothing in those

documents asking for the elimination or removal of the price

threshold clauses. Indeed, those documents suggest Deep Water

Royalty Relief would continue as it had in 1996 and 1997.

Now, with the passage of 8 years of time and a large turnover

in staff, it is impossible to say exactly what happened, but as near

as I can piece together, over the same timeframe, we were putting

regulations in final form that implemented the Deep Water Royalty

Relief Act.

The language in the lease documents themselves that refer to

this program were being revised to reflect the new regulations, and

in making those revisions it appears that the price threshold language was inadvertently dropped out for those 2 years.

Clearly, there is a lot of oil and gas production tied up with this.

Looking back over the last several years, if the price thresholds

had been in place on those leases, we would have been collecting

royalties on about 475 billion cubic feet of natural gas and over 50

million barrels of oil that has been produced royalty free because

of the absence of those clauses.

That is certainly worth several hundred million dollars of royalty

collections, and if prices remain high, will easily move into several

billion dollars over the coming years.

In addition to that, we are facing a legal challenge to thresholds,

to price thresholds for leases issued in 1996, 1997, and 2000.

On these leases, because of the price thresholds, we have already

collected over $425 million of royalties with about $100 million still

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due. That money that is due is largely from companies that are

challenging whether we could have put price thresholds on in the

first place. We clearly believe we have the authority to do so because of Section 303 of the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act. But

clearly, there is a lot of money at stake here, not just the $500 million or so looking backward, but if price thresholds remain—if

prices remain high as they are today, then clearly there are billions

of dollars in royalties that will be collected because of those price

thresholds in future years.

Because of the amount of money at stake, we are going to vigorously defend our authority to have price thresholds in these leases

so that at the end of the day, we will be able to collect all of those

amounts, plus interest.

But this is clearly a piece of litigation where there is a lot of

money at stake, and we will vigorously defend our position on this.

That concludes my remarks, and I would be happy to answer any

questions that you or members of the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cruickshank follows:]

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Mr. ISSA. Thank you. That was very informative. As Henry Kissinger once said to the press when he appeared on the eve of the

President’s resignation as the only person trusted to meet the

press, he looked at them and said, ‘‘I hope you have questions for

my answers today.’’

I will tell you have provided many answers to my questions before I ask them. Certainly, the first and foremost was why were

these thresholds not included in 1998. But I do have a followup on

that I am concerned about.

There is a trail, there is an electronic trail—there are tapes on

who drafted, when it was redrafted, in a Word document or equivalent—there is a way to piece back together when it disappeared

from a draft that ultimately was presented. Has there been an investigation either by your own agency, the Department of Justice,

or any other agency to try to ascertain, if you will, who, what,

where, when this actually occurred?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Not to that level of detail at this point, Mr.

Chairman. We have gathered the final documents that were used

for decisionmaking and for the contracts themselves and looked at

those. We have not at this point gone back and tried to locate any

preliminary drafts.

Mr. ISSA. At least for this Member, I would think that if not your

agency, then the Department of Justice would have a reason to say

this is too many dollars and too important a provision not to find

out whether, in fact, somebody did it for a beneficiary purpose that

would be outside the law and would leave you with that for today.

But certainly, I don’t think this committee is going to leave it in

our oversight capacity.

I would ask also that you would submit for the subcommittee’s

review copies of the leases entered into in 1998 and 1999, as well

as examples of leases for 1996, 1997 and 2000 so that we would

have, if you will, anecdotal examples of the very leases. I know

they are public record, but I would appreciate it if you would provide them.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. We will do so.

Mr. ISSA. You mentioned the leases post the 19 or the 2005 mandating, but you didn’t mention whether or not at today’s prices they

would or wouldn’t be paying royalties, assuming they were producing so quickly. Do you have an opinion on that?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. For the leases issued from 2000 on in the

Deep Water Gulf of Mexico, if they are producing, they would all

be paying royalties today.

Mr. ISSA. Well, you mentioned that. But the latest act where we

remandated, if you will, the elimination—I got the first part of it.

I guess it is our energy bill that you now have new requirements.

You mentioned that you have made the additional reductions subject to price levels, but you didn’t mention the price levels versus

today’s price levels.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. I don’t off the top of my head know what the

price thresholds are where you’re using in all of the leases, but all

of them are well below today’s market prices.

Mr. ISSA. So it would be fair to say that if they produce, when

they produce, at today’s prices, they would be fully royaltied and

the provision of our act would not be place at these price levels?

59

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. That is correct.

Mr. ISSA. Great. These leases and one of the reasons I ask for

copies, they are boilerplate, aren’t they?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Yes. There—the way that—there is a standard form for the lease, and what the decisionmakers are asked to

do is to really fill in the blanks as to what geographic areas, what

minimum bids, rental rates, royalty rates—what terms—stipulations we put on operations to protect the environment. So the basic

lease form itself is boilerplate, with some fill in the blank language,

and then there are addendums to it, attachments to it that spell

out some of these additional details on a sale by sale basis.

Mr. ISSA. And these always initiate from your side? In other

words, you are the landlord. You deliver the lease?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. That is correct.

Mr. ISSA. And I am assuming that in the contract way that I am

familiar with, you send them electronically to the applicant. They

make changes, send it back to you, and there is a series of underlines or some other way that each side is looking at the changes

made in those documents?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. There is no negotiation. These are leases.

They take them or leave them.

Mr. ISSA. Excellent. So that is all the more reason that I also

would appreciate, to the extent that you can reconstruct, the

boilerplate that you were giving out in each of those years in its

raw format; in other words, with no names or addresses filled in.

And if it changed mid-year or at some point, you can determine a

before and after, because I guess it is possible that it was one way

in January and another way in February. I am not sure, but I

would appreciate knowing that.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. OK. We will be able to track through all the

changes in those documents for you.

Mr. ISSA. Excellent. And this is a difficult question because I realize you came on board in 2002, but to the best of your knowledge,

is there any written guidance from anyone in the Department to

omit those price thresholds in 1998 and 1999? I believe you said

no.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. There is not. And actually, I took my current

job in 2002, but I have been with MMS since 1988.

I did work on the regulations implementing the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, and I am not aware of any guidance and could not

find any directing us to remove those provisions.

Mr. ISSA. And likewise, you would know of no written or oral instructions that may have come from the White House, the Secretary’s office, or any other government agency at that time?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. There has been nothing in writing, and I am

not aware of anything orally.

Mr. ISSA. You previously testified that you felt that this omission

was, if you will, a word processing error during the revision.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. I believe that what happened is—yes, the

addendums to the lease were being changed to reflect the fact the

regulations had changed and in so doing, the price threshold language came out for those 2 years. I have not been able to ascertain

who may have actually pushed the button or why they thought

that language could come out. My understanding is people believed

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at the time the price threshold still applied, but the revisions clearly do not have that effect.

Mr. ISSA. Now, I know that every lease is a little different, but

would it be correct to say that during the periods before and after

the 1998 and 1999 omission that leases were substantially similar

in their value, exploratory value to their price, meaning that there

wasn’t a discount or a price increase that came with these leases

that didn’t have this fairly significant threshold included in them?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Are you asking about whether there is a

change from 1997 to 1998 because of the change in that provision?

Mr. ISSA. Well, usually what—in most contracts the question is

was there a quid pro quo? Was there, in fact, some recognition of

a value difference for this or was this given away for free by its

omission?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Well, there was certainly recognition of royalty relief that was factored into how we determined whether to accept bids or not and are reflected in the increased bonuses we received.

There was no additional premium placed on these leases in 1998

and 1999 due to the lack of the price threshold provisions, in part

because I don’t think we realized at the time the price thresholds

didn’t apply; and certainly just looking at the track record, the

amount of leases issued in those 2 years actually declined from the

previous 2 years.

Mr. ISSA. They didn’t know——

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. So it is——

Mr. ISSA. OK. And this question I am particularly interested in,

and I think it is probably the most important one I will ask today.

Do you believe that the lack of price thresholds during 1998 and

1999—this follows up on what you have said is in conflict with the

overall intent of the act? Isn’t it true that Section 303 and 304 of

the act should be read together and not to the exclusion of one another? In other words, and I found this by reading 04 and then

going seeing how it read on 03. In other words, doesn’t Section 304

merely define Section 303 by providing the specific volume suspensions outlined in the bidding section in 303?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. That is how we read the act, and for that reason, we believe that the authority in 303 to have price thresholds

remains intact under that construct.

Mr. ISSA. The assessment at this point is or isn’t that you—as

to 1998 and 1999—this perhaps $7 billion or more that over the life

of the lease is you will not get because of this absence of writing,

do you believe that you have a right or any opportunity or any

chance under existing law to collect those lost revenues?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is

that these leases represent contracts entered into by two parties

and cannot be unilaterally changed by one party or the other.

Mr. ISSA. Well, I think I will ask the opposite, though, isn’t it

true that the parties, many of the same parties are disputing what

is in the language of the other 3 years—well, basically saying a

deal is a deal unless we didn’t get the better part of it, in which

case a deal isn’t a deal and we want to set aside the contract?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Well, we are being challenged on the price

threshold provisions for those other 3 years, and presumably on the

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grounds that they feel that the contract is inconsistent with the

law, in which case I suppose the law would override.

Mr. ISSA. Well, isn’t it true that the absence of those thresholds

may be in conflict with both the intent of Congress and the stated

policy of your department?

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. Well, Congress certainly made price thresholds discretionary, and at the time these leases were being put in

effect, oil and gas prices were much lower, and I am not sure if

people really gave a lot of thought to when thresholds might kick

in. That clearly was—had been the policy of the Department to include price threshold provisions and certainly those do exist in

every other year.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Now, we are going to have to make one quick vote

and come back. And fortunately, it is only one vote. Ms. Watson,

do you want to come back and ask a series of questions?

Ms. WATSON. I just have one, because you have covered many of

the questions I was going to ask.

Mr. ISSA. I am trying to get to as many of your questions as I

can. With that, I would yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. I am perplexed because the oil industry

is enjoying the highest profits in history. And I really feel it was

outrageous that the oil industry benefited after Katrina, and their

quarterly reports showed benefits in the billions of dollars.

My questions go to the audits. In your testimony, you indicated

that compliance funding has increased slightly in the nominal dollars since fiscal year 2001. Yet, the New York Times reported today

that spending on compliance and asset management has fallen

since 2001 from $51.3 million to a proposed $43.1 million in fiscal

year 2007.

Could you explain the difference in those numbers—and the

thought came to me when you said you had been there since the

1980’s and now you are the Chief, I guess Director. You have to

really watch what you wish for. You might get it.

But anyway, if you can explain that and then if you can followup

and let us know us know why MMS auditors and the tribal auditors have been cut, the number of auditors has been cut. So you

can tie those together. Those are my questions, because I think the

Chair is raising all the issues that I wanted to raise in addition.

Mr. ISSA. We are a team.

Mr. CRUICKSHANK. OK. On the first issue of the dollar amounts,

the New York Times was reporting a budget line item that captures not only what is done in the terms of audit and compliance,

but also has the budget for our Office of Enforcement, which is the

office that goes out and bills and collects the money, as well as

some IT system dollars in it.

The numbers that were in this PowerPoint reflect the dollars actually spent on audit and compliance activities, and the Office of

Inspector General has confirmed those numbers.

I would suspect that the number of auditors—the number of audits for Indian leases has not changed. The number of State auditors has not changed dramatically. It is within 2 or 3 or where it

was and really reflects an on board number rather than an FTE

number.

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Where there has been a decline in the number of auditors is on

the Federal audit staff, and that reflects the growth in the royalty

in-kind program in the Gulf of Mexico, because we don’t have as

many audits to do offshore now because of the RIK Program, we

have been able to decrease the number of auditors looking at offshore leases.

Ms. WATSON. I would think that because we have all these different ways of calculating, and as you said, the Times calculated

one way and you calculated another way and so on, I would think

that you would need more auditors to be able to set the standard.

The Markey bill I think has some provisions in that would be useful and helpful, but I do think you need a team so MMS can catch

these differences beforehand.

I don’t feel that the answer is satisfying, because I do think that

a lot rests on your shoulders and because you have been sued and

I understand that the awards have been quite large. We might

want to do a better job of making the figures kind of coincide with

what the reality is and so that was my response, Mr. Chairman.

I will be going to the floor, and I don’t see that I need to return,

so you can finish asking your questions at this time.

Mr. ISSA. Excellent.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you very much, and because several Members

have expressed an interest to supply questions in writing, I would

ask would you respond to those in writing. What I will do, because

I think we have made a fairly good jab at the record here today,

although I think that we are going to ask you to come back, undoubtedly, sometime in the future. I would ask that the record, by

unanimous consent, be kept open for 2 weeks, subject to extension

based on Members who do ask you additional questions and your

response.

I would like to thank you for being here and for dedicating your

time. I am going to save you the greatest burden of all, which is

hanging out here while we wander off to vote and then come back.

Whenever possible, it is nice to do it in one felled swoop.

So with the reservation that undoubtedly, we are not done, but

we are certainly for today and the foreseeable future, this hearing

is adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 3:11 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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