HOME PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS, Print Editions, Newsletter PRODUCTS READ THE PETROLEUM NEWS ARCHIVE! ADVERTISING INFORMATION EVENTS PETROLEUM NEWS BAKKEN MINING NEWS

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
May 2010

Vol. 15, No. 21 Week of May 23, 2010

Salazar signs order to dice up MMS 3 ways

In wake of Deepwater Horizon disaster, Interior moves to separate agency’s ‘conflicting’ development, enforcement, revenue roles

Wesley Loy

For Petroleum News

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on May 19 announced he was chopping up the Minerals Management Service into three pieces to separate what he called the agency’s “three distinct and conflicting missions.”

The action came against a backdrop of crisis – the continuing response to the Deepwater Horizon rig sinking and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The MMS regulates offshore oil and gas activity, and like BP and its rig contractor Transocean, the agency has come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the disaster.

Salazar signed a secretarial order to “separate and reassign the responsibilities that had been conducted by the Minerals Management Service into new management structures.”

The three new agencies are the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, responsible for offshore energy leasing and development; the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement; and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, responsible for royalty collection.

Salazar said it was time to break apart the development, policing and revenue functions of the MMS, which former Interior Secretary James Watt created by secretarial order in 1982.

The reorganization builds on a number of other significant reforms the MMS has seen since early 2009. The reforms include new ethics standards for employees and an end to the controversial royalty-in-kind program.

MMS is a significant revenue producer for the nation, collecting about $13 billion annually.

MMS and Alaska

In Alaska, the MMS regulates oil and gas leasing on the state’s vast outer continental shelf, including that of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as well as Cook Inlet.

Salazar offered nothing new on the status of the Alaska shelf during his news conference held in Washington, D.C.

Shell hopes to drill exploration wells in 2010 in the Beaufort and Chukchi, but Salazar announced May 7 that no new drilling permits would be approved until the Interior Department completes an offshore drilling safety review President Obama ordered. Interior expects to deliver that review to the president by May 28.

Salazar said he would travel to the main MMS offices in the Lower 48 to talk about the reorganization. The agency has 1,700 employees, with about 85 working in its Anchorage office.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Salazar will come to Anchorage, John Callahan, a local MMS spokesman, told Petroleum News.






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469 - Fax: 1-907 522-9583
[email protected] --- http://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)©2013 All rights reserved. The content of this article and web site may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law subject to criminal and civil penalties.