or gas production. In fact, the industry opposed cash payments (RIV) and planned legal challenges to government efforts to establish regulations for fair market-based royalty payments. A pilot test of the RIK concept was conducted. The Bush administration allowed the pilot to expand to a full program, with industry support, even though the bill authorizing the program failed to pass in Congress. In FY2008, the RIK program accounted for more than 50% of the Agency's revenue collections. When MRM collected royalties-in-kind, the oil or gas received from producers was offered for sale by the U.S. Government on the open market and the proceeds from these sales were taken as revenues. The RIK program within MRM was responsible for managing these in-kind sales. In 2003, the General Accounting Office (GAO) noted that the MMS had failed to develop "clear strategic objectives linked to statutory requirements nor collected the necessary information to effectively monitor and evaluate the Royalty-in-Kind Program". From 2003 to 2008, the GAO consistently challenged the legitimacy of the statistics published by the MMS that it used to support its claims that the RIK program was a success and justify its expansion. Deficits in accounting practices, policies and procedures, and information systems used by the MMS led to concerns that the industry was significantly underpaying on their royalty obligations. Computer systems in use by the Agency were considered to be sufficiently inadequate that a failure to report revenue or provide RIK by an industry member could not be reliably detected. For instance, the GAO estimated that underpayments amounted to ~$160 million USD in 2006. The GAO also disputed the practice of tracking oil and gas RIK deliveries on a monthly rather than daily basis, a practice used by the MMS and supported by the Department of the Interior, but potentially prone to abuse by producers. Other contributing factors to the placing the accuracy of revenue streams at risk were insufficiently trained personnel and insufficient numbers of personnel working in the RIK program and a lack of standard reporting method by industry members, leading to manual rather than computer-based processing of more than half of the data required for RIK data inputs. Citing its scandals and the persistent incapacity of the RIK program to fulfill its statutory obligations, Interior Secretary Salazar announced in September 2009 that the RIK program would be shut down. Due to existing lease contracts with RIK provisions,