WASHINGTON — Federal investigators said Wednesday that an Interior Department group in charge of collecting oil and natural gas royalties was compromised for years by employees who improperly accepted gifts from oil company employees, handed out sweetheart deals, had sex with subordinates and industry contacts and used illegal drugs.
The reports from the department's inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, the culmination of several years-long investigations, were the latest to question the cozy relationship between the energy industry and the Minerals Management Service, the obscure Interior Department agency that issues lucrative drilling leases to energy companies and then collects royalties from the leases of taxpayer-owned land.
The alleged misconduct occurred over nearly four years. It involved more than a dozen current and former employees of an arm of the Minerals Management Service, which takes in more than $8 billion a year in royalty revenue from the leases and is the U.S. government's largest nontax source of revenue.
The reports, delivered to Congress on Wednesday, detail a freewheeling "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" in which employees of the Denver-based Royalty in Kind program considered themselves part of a commercial enterprise that wasn't bound by government ethics rules, Devaney wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that accompanied the reports.
The program collects royalty payments that are made "in kind" -- in oil, for example, instead of cash -- and resells the crude on the market. The 60-employee group collects revenue representing nearly half of what the Minerals Management Service brings in.
Among the allegations:
* Government employees routinely socialized with industry representatives, having drinks and meals and attending golf outings, a ski trip, a Toby Keith concert and other excursions. Two of the 19 employees cited had received gifts on more than 135 occasions from four major oil and gas companies. Devaney noted that "between 2002 and 2006, nearly one-third of the entire RIK staff socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies with whom RIK was conducting official business."
One government employee said that because the agency regularly paid a major producer to transport oil, it was "perfectly appropriate" for him to attend a desert treasure hunt paid for by the producer, Devaney wrote. Government regulations forbid employees from taking a gift valued at more than $20 and from taking gifts worth more than $50 from one source in a year.
