You remember the Minerals Management Service, right? The agency that completely failed to properly oversee oil rig operations? Employees literally in bed with oil company representatives, jacked up on crystal meth while on the job? Fell on its sword after BP’s Deepwater rig exploded and sank, causing a still-ongoing environmental catastrophe? Now you can own a piece of it. The watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility this morning announced they’re auctioning off a wide assortment of tchotchkes from MMS. And we’ve got to hand it to them: their snark is top-notch. PEER has 16 items for auction, starting at…
Browsing: Minerals Management Service
NPR’s Planet Money blog has a cute little rundown of federal agencies that have changed their names in the past, prompted by the Minerals Management Service’s rebranding as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (try to say that acronym three times fast). This sort of thing intrigues me so I Googled around a bit and found a nice list on Wikipedia of defunct federal agencies. Anyone remember the Board of Tea Appeals (which apparently hung around until 1996, somehow?!)? How about the Board of Economic Warfare? The Federal Theatre Project? Oh, for the days when a fed…
This one is slightly unbelievable. You may remember Milton Dial from last year’s Minerals Management Service scandals. He pleaded guilty in September to violating federal conflict-of-interest law. And today, he was sentenced by a federal judge, Robert C. Jones. What was Dial’s punishment? “I apologize to you, sir,” U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Jones as he imposed a minimum sentence on Milton Dial, a former deputy associate director in the Lakewood, Colo., office that handled billions of dollars of oil and natural gas contracts. The judge said he felt Dial, who retired from the agency in 2004 after 33…
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is asking the Justice Department to review ethical scandals at the department and considering an overhaul of the Minerals Management Service’s royalty program. Salazar made the announcement after a meeting with MMS employees at the agency’s offices in Lakewood, Colo. The agency was the subject of scandal in September: A report from the department’s inspector general highlighted illegal drug use by employees and a cozy relationship with the energy companies MMS regulates. MMS is responsible for collecting royalties from oil and gas projects on federal lands. Justice decided not to prosecute two high-ranking employees cited in…
Ethics seemed in short supply at the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service last year; we reported on revelations of illicit sex with oil company executives, major conflicts of interest, and concerns that the agency’s royalty program wasn’t getting the best value for taxpayers. To that end: President Obama’s new Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, will visit the agency’s Colorado offices tomorrow and announce the first steps in his ethics reform plan. He’s holding a press conference after his meeting with MMS employees; we’ll have more details tomorrow afternoon. Salazar made a quick appearance at today’s White House briefing, and…
We’ve written before, on this blog and in the newspaper, about the problems at Interior’s Minerals Management Service, which collects royalties from oil and gas exploration projects on federal lands. The most recent problems affect the “royalty-in-kind” program, which collects royalties in the form of oil and gas instead of cash; MMS sells the products for a profit. MMS says it’s more lucrative than a cash royalty program; good-government groups and many experts disagree. Apparently, so does the Government Accountability Office (pdf): MMS’s annual reports to the Congress do not fully describe the performance of the royalty-in-kind program and, in…
The Interior Department announced today that more than 190 million acres of federal land are now open for geothermal energy projects. Last month, you’ll remember, Congress declined to renew the ban on oil shale development before it adjourned. And the lapsed ban on offshore drilling means a huge swath of land is now open for leasing. All this adds up to a massive expansion of responsibilities at a few federal agencies — including one that doesn’t have a stellar track record: the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, lambasted by the department’s IG last month for a “pervasive culture of exclusivity”…