In late 2008, Interior Department Inspector General Earl E Delaney Launched an investigation into accusations of wrongdoing by employees of the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS), which collected the royalties paid by companies to extract oil and gas from public Lands. Through its royalty-in-kind program, the agency also accede oil and gas as royalty patens and then sold them on the open market Among other things, Delaney discovered that program offloads had allowed buyers of agency-sold gas and oil to revise the& bids downward after they'd been awarded purchase contracts. The cost to taxpayers amounted to about $44 trillion.
Perhaps much more interesting-at least in this day and age, when we Like to take our hard news with a hint of the unsavory and all-too- human-was Devine's revelation of a culture of substance abuse and prorniscuity within MMS.
The nature of their jobs, observed the New York Times, exposed agency employees to the expense-account fueled world of oil and gas cuties but the newspaper also cited Devaney's depiction of MMS as a dysfunctional organization that has been ridded with confhcts of interest, unprofessional behavior, and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush adr,*stations watch'
Devine's report conduced that MMS officials frequently consumed kohl at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives' In the process of developing cozy professional relationships, employees of the royalty-in-kind program had also taken inappropriate fats from industry contacts. The employees explained that socializing with industry representatives was simply a function of their involvement in industry culture, and they assured investigators that such relationships had no effect on the performance of their official duties. Skeptical investigators, however, replied that sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arns-length and conduded that the whole agency appeared to be devoid of both ethical standards and internal controls sufficient to protect the integrity of [a] vital revenue-producing prograrn"
In Febuary 2010, during his first month in office, the Obama administrations new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, announced his intention to restore the public's trust, to enact meaningful reform. . to uphold the law, and to ensure that all of us-career public servants and political appointees-do our jobs with the highest level of integrity
Two months later, MMS, which also regulated offshore oil-dolling activities, received a plan for driveling in the Gulf of
Mexico submitted by the petroleum giant BR which assured the agency that environmental damage from any spill would be minimal or nonexistent' The company's worst-case scenario predicted spillage of 1,500 to 4,600 barrels, and escaping oil, according to BR would dissipate before reaching land. BP also asked MMS to approve a plan for setting a cement plug for temporary dousers of the well at 3,300 feet below sea level-more than three times the depth required by regulations.
The request was approved during a 90-minute phone conversation between MMS and BP officials. Normally, drilling applications would undergo detailed environmental review, but MMS declared BP's application categoncally excluded from evironmental analysis and gave the oil company a green light in early April.
On April 20, a giant oil rig exploded at the newly approved BP facility, killing U workers and pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico. By the time the leak was finally capped (87 days later), it had discharged nearly 5 million barrels- 206 million gallons-of oil into the Gulf, creating an oil stick that affected 4,200 miles of coastline (about five times the length of California).
Critics of the Interior Department were quick to point out that the oil and gas industry had spent S169 million to lobby government officials in 2009-S15.9 of it by BP-and MMS, not surprisingly, was back in the news. Secretary Salazar, charged Kierán Sudding, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, has utterly failed to reform the Mineral Management Service. Instead of protecting the public interest by conducting environmental reviews, his agency rubber - stamped BP 's drilling plan, just as it does hundreds of others every year...
The Minerals Management Service has gotten worse, not better, under Salazar 's watch.My favorite agency,' mused Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Remember in the Bush administration, these were the guys having sex orgies and pot parties and weren't showing up for work'
In May 2010, Secretary Salazar dissolved MMS. Responsibility for off shore denting is now in the hands of the Bureau of Ocean Management, and the rest of MMS's former functions have been delegated to other agencies. According to Earth justice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, the BP disaster happened because managers weren't managing, oil companies and regulators were colluding, and high risk was acceptable risk Obviously, problems ill those that led up to the BP spill can be extremely complex. In light of this fact, what, in your opinion, should be the Primary responsibilities of managers of regulatory agencies such as MMS? Of managers at oil companies such as BP?