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US House Hearing Looks into Government’s Oil-sex Scandal!

US Interior Secre tary Dirk Kempthorne told Congress on Thursday he was ‘dismayed’ about the “inexcusable” behaviour of some department employees who had sex, used drugs and took gifts from workers at regulated oil and gas companies.

Kempthorne testi?ed at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the ?ndings by the Interior Department’s inspector general about “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” at the department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), whose employees handled billions of dollars in oil and natural gas supplies that were turned over by companies as in-kind royalty payments for drilling on federal lands.

“The abuse of the public trust in this instance is tragic,” Kempthorne testi?ed. “I am outraged that the public’s trust, an important and necessary part of public service, has been abused.” In his ?ndings, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney said about a dozen MMS workers in the royalty-in-kind programme took cocaine and marijuana and had “illicit sexual encounters.” Government workers also got drunk at social events with employees of oil companies doing business with the agency and MMS workers had “brief sexual relationships” with industry contacts, the inspector general said.

The oil companies named in the report were Chevron, Shell Oil, Hess Corp and Gary Williams Energy Corp.

While all the companies provided documents, Devaney said Chevron slowed the investigation by hiring counsel for its employees, who then did not make themselves available to be interviewed by the inspector general’s investigators.

Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, who heads the House committee, asked whether “the cronyism between MMS employees and the oil and gas companies” cost the government lost royalty revenue.

Devaney said “there probably were some losses” in royalty money that should have been paid by the companies, but he has no idea how much.

“Those contract ?les were in terrible shape” and could not be audited, he said.

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