Former MMS chief calls for ‘firewalls’ between inspectors and related oil industry workers

“The inspectors who had accepted gifts from industry employees had extensive social and community connections, including family relationships, with those employees. Simply put, they all live in the same towns,” noted Birnbaum at the meeting in Washington, D.C., of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill and Offshore Drilling Commission.

“Even if the agency brought in a completely new cadre of inspectors with no prior connection to the industry or to the affected communities, those inspectors would still have to live there,” she added.

Birnbaum said that while there is no “silver bullet” to avoid regulator-industry ties, the firewalls could be bolstered in some ways.

“One helpful suggestion made by the Interior inspector general is that penalties be established for industry, in addition to those for federal employees, who receive inappropriate gifts. This would require legislation. Several other measures could reduce connections: requiring regular rotation of inspectors; setting firewalls between inspectors and facilities where their relatives work; monitoring the rate of violations found by various inspectors in district offices; imposing moratoria on inspectors visiting facilities operated by the companies that previously employed them, which I believe MMS has instituted,” she said.

The Obama administration has overhauled MMS in the wake of the oil spill and renamed it the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.