On 05-24-10, ROSS SAUER said to ALL:

RS>Never let the facts get in the way


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Regulators Accepted Gifts From Oil Industry, Report Says - WSJ.comMore


STEPHEN POWER


WASHINGTON: Employees of a federal agency that regulates offshore
drilling, including some whose duties included inspecting offshore oil
rigs, accepted sporting-event tickets, meals, and other gifts from oil and
natural-gas companies and used government computers to view pornography,
according to a new report by the Interior Department's inspector general.


The report, published Tuesday on the inspector general's website, describes a
culture in which inspectors assigned to the Lake Charles, La., office of the
Minerals Management Service have moved with "ease" between jobs in industry
and government, drawing on relationships that formed "well before they took
their jobs" with the agency.



Although the report says that "all of the conduct" examined in
the report is
"dated" and occurred prior to 2007, its publication comes at a
sensitive time,
with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar scheduled to testify before Congress
Wednesday on his plan to restructure the agency following the April 20
explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The accident led to the deaths of
11 workers and to the spillage of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of
Mexico each day.


Mr. Salazar said he has asked the inspector general to expand her
investigation to determine whether any of "this reprehensible behavior"
persisted after the department implemented new ethics rules in 2009.


The inspector general's report doesn't specify how many MMS staffers accepted
gifts from the oil industry, but says "this behavior appears to have
drastically declined" since a former MMS supervisor, Don Howard, was
terminated from the agency in 2007.


Mr. Howard, the former regional supervisor of the Gulf of Mexico region for
MMS, pled guilty and was sentenced to a year's probation in federal court in
New Orleans last year for lying about receiving gifts from an offshore-
drilling contractor.


Among other things, the report says that in 2005, 2006 and 2007, MMS employees
attended a number of events either organized or partly funded by various
offshore companies, including hunting and fishing trips and, golf tournaments.


It quotes an industry official as describing how he arranged for two MMS
inspectors to fly with him on a friend's plane to the 2005 Peach Bowl and to
get tickets to the game.


The report also describes one MMS inspector as having admitted to using
crystal methamphetamine, and says investigators found "numerous
instances" of
pornography and "other inappropriate material" on the email
accounts of 13 MMS
employees, six of whom have resigned.


In a written statement Tuesday, Mr. Salazar said some of the employees
referred to in the inspector general's report have resigned, been terminated,
or referred for prosecution. He added that any remaining staffers accused in
the report of questionable behavior will be placed on administrative leave
pending the outcome of a personnel review.


In 2008, another report by the inspector general concluded that MMS employees
assigned to a royalty-collection office in Colorado created a "culture of
ethical failure" by accepting gifts from, and in some cases having sex with,
industry representatives.


Following the inspector general's report, the Interior Department took
disciplinary action against more than a half dozen MMS workers, with
punishments that ranged from a warning letter to termination.


The latest report does not attempt to link the alleged activities of MMS
employees in the Lake Charles office to the accident involving the Deepwater
Horizon oil rig. It does, however, say that an unnamed "confidential
source"
told investigators that some MMS inspectors had allowed petroleum company
workers to fill out inspection forms in pencil.


According to the unnamed source, the forms would then be completed by MMS
inspectors who would write on top of the pencil in ink. The report doesn't
establish whether the allegation is true, saying that despite reviewing more
than 550 files, investigators "could not discern if any fraudulent alterations
were present."





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