Excerpt:
If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-month investigation by The New York Times has found. . . .

The disparities in gas prices parallel those uncovered just five years ago in a wave of scandals involving royalty payments for oil. From 1998 to 2001, a dozen major companies, while admitting no wrongdoing, paid a total of $438 million to settle charges that they had fraudulently understated their sale prices for oil.

Since then, the government has tightened its rules for oil payments. But with natural gas, the Bush administration recently loosened the rules and eased its audits intended to uncover cheating.
[snip]

by Edmund Andrews
New York Times
January 23, 2006
Read the original here.

Excerpt:
The most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.
[snip]

[Note: I agree. At root among these assumptions are the assumptions 1) that we can continue blindly to worship indiscrimate growth and 2) that we can continue to take for granted our growing dependence on globally finite supplies of high quality oil and natural gas. If you're too lazy, busy, incompetent, or prejudiced to read the whole of Leggett's essay for the substance of what he has to say, you're symptomatic of a big part of the problem. -- Dan]

By Jeremy Leggett
Independent Online
20 January 2006
Read the original here.

London Brent crude futures rose $2 on Friday to its highest level since early September after a report that Kuwait's oil reserves are only half those officialy stated.

March Brent  rose $2.01 to $67.24 a barrel after industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) reported it had seen internal Kuwaiti records showing that Kuwait's reserves were about 48 billion barrels, compared to the officially stated 99 billion barrels.
[snip]

Brent rises $2 after Kuwait reserve report
Reuters
January 20, 2006
Read the original here.

[Postscript: Today, as to be expected, a Kuwait official has said the above report about small reserves may not be accurate. "I have no idea where they got this figure from ... I don't think it's accurate," Farouk Al Zanki, the chairman of state-run Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) said in Kuwait City. See here. I say, "Right." ]

Congress today announced that the office of the President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of 2/1/2006.
[snip]

[Note: I dedicate this humor piece to Kasilof resident, Ruby Kime of the ACT group, who's solution for most of the borough's problems and non-problems is "outsourcing. It's a philosophical thing." -- Dan]

Essie Jain