It’s one thing to sell off national assets for a pittance. It’s quite another to deliberately walk away from collecting even that pittance.

Of course only in an era when the national debt is climbing by nearly $1. 6 billion per day could $6 million in unpaid natural gas royalties be described as a pittance. But hey, a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’re talking real money, right?

In a disturbingly precedent-setting move, the U.S. Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service is giving up on an effort to make Chevron Corporation pay additional royalties for natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico. This is expected to clear the way for Chevron and other energy companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions in additional payments for oil and gas owned by the American public.

At a time when the federal government is offering sweetened incentives to spur additional energy exploration and is pushing through more drilling in wilderness areas, the Bush administration cut audits to ensure the U. S. Treasury is receiving its fair share of profits. Challenging Chevron for basically the same practices, state governments and private landowners forced payment of $70 million in additional royalties.

According to exemplary reporting by The New York Times, the administration waited nearly two years to demand payment of $500 million that energy firms pocketed by claiming incorrect royalty exemptions.

“In theory, companies are required to pay the government a royalty of 12 percent to 16 percent of their sales. In practice, the definition of sales is as convoluted as a Rubik’s Cube,” Times reporter Edmund Andrews wrote last week. Add in officials who are reluctant to do appropriate oversight, and you have a recipe for another Teapot Dome, the great scandal of President Warren Harding’s administration.

Aside from incompetency, this situation can be pinned on two factors:

? Secrecy. The government keeps a tight lid on who it is auditing for cheating and the terms of any settlements. The public is usually shut out of the process, woefully ignorant of the government’s insider dealing and screw-ups.

? The culture of quasi-corruption that pervades Washington, D.C., in which industry hacks jump into agency posts and then back again, making regulatory decisions that benefit once-and-future employers.

With energy companies making record profits, they ought to also be making a record contribution to paying off our nation’s bills. That they are not is a reflection of the sorry state of corporate citizenship and regulatory malfeasance.