MMS Director Birnbaum resigns

The Associated Press

The head of the troubled U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned under pressure May 27 as President Barack Obama moved more aggressively to take charge of the Gulf oil spill.

The departure of Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a congressional hearing where Birnbaum had been scheduled to testify but didn’t show up.

Birnbaum resigned “on her own terms and her own volition,” Salazar told lawmakers.

The development came just hours before Obama was set to announce strong new measures in response to the spill, including extending a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling and canceling some planned lease sales entirely.

Birnbaum, who had led MMS since July 2009, left after she and her agency came under withering criticism from lawmakers of both parties over allegedly lax oversight of drilling and cozy ties with industry. Salazar recently announced he was radically restructuring the agency into three separate parts.

In a three-sentence resignation letter to Salazar, Birnbaum wrote: “As you move forward with the reorganization of Minerals Management Service you will be requiring three new leaders ... I wish you every good fortune in the reorganization of the bureau.”

In the wake of an Inspector General’s report alleging corruption at her agency during the previous administration, and indications that problems extended into the current one, Birnbaum’s departure didn’t satisfy some lawmakers.

“The departure of Elizabeth Birnbaum from MMS does not address the root problem. She has only been the public face of MMS for 11 months and the most serious allegations occurred prior to her tenure,” said Rep. Nick Rahall, a Democrat and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

“This might on the surface be a good start but must not be the end game,” Rahall said.

It was a day of fast-moving developments in Washington and in the Gulf, where engineers were watching for signs of success from the latest attempt to stanch the leak five weeks into the catastrophe. The so-called “top kill” technique of pumping heavy materials onto the leak appeared to make progress. At the same time, new estimates released by a team of scientists showed the spill has surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst in U.S. history, growing to nearly 19 million gallons (72 million liters) according to the most conservative estimate.