Companies That Made And Maintained Blow Out Preventer Have Had Hands-On Access To It

From Cryptogon.

A federal board allowed to monitor testing of a key piece of Gulf oil spill evidence — the blowout preventer — demanded Thursday that the analysis stop, saying representatives of the companies that made and maintained the 300-ton device have been getting preferential and sometimes hands-on access to it...


“Given the well-publicized history of improper relationships between the former Minerals Management Service and members of the oil industry, one would have expected that extraordinary care would be taken to conduct the BOP testing above reproach,” safety board chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso said in the letter. “One would have expected an independent, second set of eyes like the CSB to be welcomed. Regrettably this has not been the case.”
The MMS was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement after two scathing reports by a federal inspector general. The reports highlighted drug use and sex among agency employees and oil and gas industry executives, and said drilling regulators accepted gifts and trips from oil and gas companies and even negotiated to go work for the industry while overseeing it.

U.S. Oil Rig Inspection Agency Staff Was On Crystal Meth During Work Hours

Not called Minerals Management for nothing....

From Cryptogon.


Staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to an Interior Department report alleging a culture of cronyism between regulators and the industry.
In at least one case, an inspector for the Minerals Management Service admitted using crystal methamphetamine and said he might have been under the influence of the drug the next day at work, according to the report by the acting inspector general of the Interior Department...

....Her biggest concern is the ease with which minerals agency employees move between industry and government, Kendall said. While no specifics were included in the report, “we discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange — both government and industry — have often known one another since childhood,” Kendall said.