Here we are in early 2006, and the headlines are briefly given over to the disclosure that the oil companies could end up underpaying their royalties for drilling on American public lands by $7 billion.

There was a time, a generation ago, when people here in the United States thought and wrote about the underpinning of the US economy--the energy industry--in a serious way. In the mid-1970s the country was bustling with groups pushing for public control, for extending the regulatory powers of the Federal Trade Commission over natural gas prices, for breakup of the oil companies.

In came Carter, and up went the solar collectors on the White House roof. Aside from that, it was downhill all the way. The oil companies spent millions to winch themselves out of the PR debacle of the oil embargo of 1973-'74, in which the public rightly perceived them as eager co-conspirators with OPEC in price-gouging and profiteering.

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