The Interior Department, struggling to prevent the government from losing billions of dollars in royalties for oil and gas produced in publicly owned waters, said Thursday that it was close to agreement with 2 of the 56 companies that hold lucrative drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
The two companies, Royal Dutch Shell and BP-Amoco, are among the biggest producers along the outer continental shelf. But even as Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage that the government could lose more than $10 billion over the next decade, the Bush administration said it flatly opposed House bills that would pressure oil companies into renegotiating flawed leases that the government signed in the late 1990.
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