NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The federal government has cut back audits of energy companies that pay billions of dollars for leases to produce oil and gas on federal property, according to a published report.

The New York Times reported that royalties from the leases have risen much more slowly than prices for oil and gas, and that several oil-producing states and American Indian tribes, which receive a share of the royalties energy companies pay the federal government, are protesting the reduced audits by the Bush administration.

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The newspaper reports that a group of state and tribal auditors said that the Interior Department had cut back on audits in favor of a much looser approach known as "compliance review" that could miss many instances of cheating. Yusef Robb, a spokesman for California's state controller, told the newspaper that the Bush administration is missing instances of fraud with the current procedures.

"Under the compliance review system, if you fill out your fraudulent form correctly, you can get away with the fraud," Robb told the newspaper. "We know we can't trust companies to do what's right without regular auditing."

Officials at the Interior Department told the newspaper the apparent shortfall stems largely from changes in production and lag times in reporting that distort the government's published statistics. The newspaper reports that the administration defended the shift in how it monitors the leases.

"We implemented a new management strategy that increases efficient use of our internal resources, and in fact allows us to do as many or more audits with fewer auditors," Johnnie Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service, wrote to House members last month, according to the report.

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