FLASHBACK: The Sex And Oil Scandals Of The Minerals Management Service

[mod mom]

Of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said it best on Tuesday: "In the Bush administration, these were the guys that were having sex orgies and pot parties and weren't showing up for work."

As the government agency that regulates offshore drilling, MMS is already under scrutiny for its handling of the rig that exploded and caused the oil spill. It's not yet clear whether there were missteps by the agency, though the Washington Post reported earlier this week that MMS' environmental impact assessments of the Deepwater Horizon rig had not considered the possibility of a major spill.

But longtime TPMmuckraker readers will be familiar with the agency's past woes. Let's take a spin through the archives:

Sex-for-Oil Scandal Rocks Interior Department (January 2007):

This investigation into possible favors-for-favors (monetary or otherwise) is just part of a much larger scandal that's emerging from MMS. Through bad contracting, lax auditing and nonexistent -- possibly criminal -- oversight, a picture is emerging of Interior officials either colluding with big oil companies to defraud the country on a massive scale, or dispatching their responsibilities in an abysmally negligent fashion.

-snip

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/mms_flashback_sex_drugs_oil.php?ref=fpi


Guess those parties paid off:

The Deepwater rig lacked a remote-control shut-off switch, a back-up system that would close the well even if the rig above was destroyed.-snip The oil companies complained that the $500,000 devices were too expensive. Keep in mind the Deepwater was a $560 million rig. Countries like Norway and Brazil require these precautions to avert catastrophe, but in the US the technology is voluntary. This is thanks to a 2003 decision by the Bush administration's Minerals Management Service (MMS)"


http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/bp-getting-heat-gulf-disaster

[Blue_Tires]

1. ttt

I remember someone in the news briefly touching on this 2-3 weeks back...