The new director of a government agency that oversees offshore drilling is creating an internal investigations team to help him improve the agency’s performance, the Associated Press reports.
The investigative team will look into allegations of misconduct and respond quickly to emerging problems, said Michael Bromwich, the new head of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
The new unit will report directly to him and will help ensure that oil and gas companies comply with laws and regulations, as well as investigate problems within the agency itself, Bromwich said Wednesday.
“My two-and-a-half days on the job has shown me that there is not that kind of investigative capability in my organization, and I think it’s vital to create it,” Bromwich told a Senate subcommittee.
Bromwich, who took over Monday at the newly created ocean energy bureau, established a similar investigative team at the Justice Department when he served as its inspector general.
A former federal prosecutor, Bromwich, 56, has been given a broad mandate to reorganize the drilling agency, which until Monday was known as the Minerals Management Service.
The 1,700-employee agency, which both regulates the oil and gas industry and collects billions in royalties from it, has been criticized for a cozy relationship with oil companies and lax oversight.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Bromwich and other officials will make attacking corruption at the minerals agency a top priority.
“I’m confident that, with their leadership … we will be able to see the day where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management can have the standards and can have the enforcement to be able to do the job that it needs do,” Salazar said.
