Marcus Baram Marcus@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
A tough new memo from a House committee probing the Gulf oil spill exposes the Interior Department under Presidents Bush and Obama for its failure to properly oversee offshore oil drilling operations. The three most recent Interior Secretaries -- Gale Norton (2002-2006), Dirk Kempthorne (2006-2009), and Ken Salazar (2009-present) -- all received withering criticism. All are due to testify at congressional hearing on Tuesday, where they are sure to be asked tough questions about their tenure.
The memorandum from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Democratic majority staff takes perhaps the toughest stance on Norton's controversial tenure (she was recently the subject of a Justice Department probe into whether she acted improperly by granting Royal Dutch Shell several valuable oil shale leases on federal land shortly before she took a job with the oil giant. The DOJ has reportedly closed its probe of her as of last week.
Just two weeks after Bush was sworn into office in 2001, he asked Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to develop energy policy. The much-criticized task force met privately with oil and gas executives and Cheney repeatedly refused to disclose their identities.
In May 2001, the group issued its report, which stated that "exploration and production from the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] has an impressive environmental record." It also stated that existing environmental permitting laws and regulations, at the federal and state level, were creating "delays and uncertainties [that] can hinder proper energy exploration and production projects."
As the primary federal official responsible for implementing the administration's new energy policy, Norton encouraged offshore drilling with incentives for oil companies. However, she "imposed few new safety standards on offshore drilling operations," according to the memo.
"On multiple occasions, reports prepared for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) warned that the blowout preventers (BOPs) used on offshore wells were unreliable. The Department never acted on these warnings.
The Department also rejected efforts begun in the Clinton Administration to strengthen federal regulation of offshore well cementing practices."
Kempthorne didn't perform much better -- after the sale of a lease for the Macondo well, the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to BP for $34 million in 2008, he crowed that the agency had "won the championship."
Under Kempthorne, the Mineral Management Service (MMS) was also embroiled in an embarrassing scandal in 2008, in which it was revealed that government employees accepted gifts, used drugs with and had sex with oil industry officials.
Though the memo notes that Salazar has instituted some reforms and some needed regulations for the agency's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling, it takes the agency to task for its decisions regarding the Deepwater Horizon. Specifically, MMS granted BP a "categorical exclusion" from the need to conduct a thorough site-specific environmental review.
The agency also allowed BP to make several key revisions to the drilling site, changes which have been shown to have potentially played a major role in the rig's disastrous explosion on April 20, 2010.
Gale Norton is by far the worst of the bunch and she was forced to resign. Rightardia will expect her to invoke the Fifth amendment during her testimony.
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The memorandum from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Democratic majority staff takes perhaps the toughest stance on Norton's controversial tenure (she was recently the subject of a Justice Department probe into whether she acted improperly by granting Royal Dutch Shell several valuable oil shale leases on federal land shortly before she took a job with the oil giant. The DOJ has reportedly closed its probe of her as of last week.
Just two weeks after Bush was sworn into office in 2001, he asked Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to develop energy policy. The much-criticized task force met privately with oil and gas executives and Cheney repeatedly refused to disclose their identities.
In May 2001, the group issued its report, which stated that "exploration and production from the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] has an impressive environmental record." It also stated that existing environmental permitting laws and regulations, at the federal and state level, were creating "delays and uncertainties [that] can hinder proper energy exploration and production projects."
As the primary federal official responsible for implementing the administration's new energy policy, Norton encouraged offshore drilling with incentives for oil companies. However, she "imposed few new safety standards on offshore drilling operations," according to the memo.
"On multiple occasions, reports prepared for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) warned that the blowout preventers (BOPs) used on offshore wells were unreliable. The Department never acted on these warnings.
The Department also rejected efforts begun in the Clinton Administration to strengthen federal regulation of offshore well cementing practices."
Kempthorne didn't perform much better -- after the sale of a lease for the Macondo well, the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to BP for $34 million in 2008, he crowed that the agency had "won the championship."
Under Kempthorne, the Mineral Management Service (MMS) was also embroiled in an embarrassing scandal in 2008, in which it was revealed that government employees accepted gifts, used drugs with and had sex with oil industry officials.
Though the memo notes that Salazar has instituted some reforms and some needed regulations for the agency's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling, it takes the agency to task for its decisions regarding the Deepwater Horizon. Specifically, MMS granted BP a "categorical exclusion" from the need to conduct a thorough site-specific environmental review.
The agency also allowed BP to make several key revisions to the drilling site, changes which have been shown to have potentially played a major role in the rig's disastrous explosion on April 20, 2010.
Gale Norton is by far the worst of the bunch and she was forced to resign. Rightardia will expect her to invoke the Fifth amendment during her testimony.
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Netcraft rank: 15549 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com
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