Interior Agency Split to Devote Attention to Safety and Environment

The Interior Department announced yesterday that it will split into two parts the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the troubled agency that has been blamed for not doing enough to prevent the explosion and ensuing oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

“[Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar said the MMS’s inspection, investigation, and enforcement operations will be separate and independent from the agency’s leasing, revenue collection, and permitting functions.”

The split should help, experts say, because it will reduce conflicts of interest within the Interior Department. “Separating these functions would benefit all parties involved—the Department of Interior, the American public, and the oil companies that must rebuild public trust,” said Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program. "Conflicts of interest must be minimized so that the agency charged with enforcing safeguards is able to focus solely on protecting workers and the environment.”

At a fundamental level, MMS will always struggle to ensure worker safety and environmental protection. Having one arm devoted to promoting energy and extraction companies and another arm devoted to implementing and enforcing controls on those companies behavior is going to be dicey. The conflict is almost inherent in the agency’s mission. (Aside: I wonder if MMS will change its mission in light of the split.):

The MMS’s mission is to manage the ocean energy and mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf and Federal and American Indian mineral revenues to enhance public and trust benefits, promote responsible use, and realize fair value. 

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is supposed to attenuate the kind of conflict MMS faces. NEPA requires all agencies to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, such as decisions to grant oil or gas leases, and consider alternatives that would minimize damage. (For a thoughtful reconsideration of NEPA in light of the oil spill, see this blog post from law professor Holly Doremus.)

But, as news reports have highlighted, MMS has liberally applied “categorical exclusions” to reduce its NEPA workload and give companies a pass on the rigors of environmental review. MMS granted such a waiver to BP’s Deepwater Horizon operation.

Only time will tell if the bifurcation of MMS reduces the risk of future safety and environmental disasters, but Salazar’s decision to split the agency shows a promising commitment to reform.

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