(05/28/2010)

Noelle Straub, E&E reporter

Bob Abbey, who heads the federal agency that oversees onshore drilling, will serve as acting director of the Minerals Management Service after its chief was forced to resign yesterday amid withering criticism of the agency's shoddy oversight of offshore drilling.

 

Abbey will remain director of the Bureau of Land Management while he leads MMS, but will turn over his daily management duties to his deputy, Mike Poole.

 

"Bob Abbey's recent leadership on onshore energy reforms is exactly the kind of experience we need as we continue to reform and begin to restructure MMS," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "I appreciate Bob's willingness to help tackle this crisis in the Gulf."

 

Abbey will begin the process of managing the reorganization of MMS into three separate agencies, the department said. Salazar has signed a secretarial order splitting up the leasing, enforcement and revenue collection duties of MMS into three different bureaus.

 

Given his new appointment, Abbey is returning to Washington from the Incident Command Center in Louisiana, where he has been helping lead Interior's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

 

Liz Birnbaum was forced to resign yesterday after 11 months as head of the MMS. In a statement thanking President Obama for the "great privilege" of presiding over MMS, Birnbaum said she had inherited a flawed agency (Greenwire, May 27).

 

The former head attorney at the conservation group American Rivers, Birnbaum brought little managerial experience with her to MMS and had come under criticism for taking a back seat to other officials in response to the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that began when BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

 

MMS has been slammed for cozy relationships with industry and stories of sex, pornography viewing and drug use.

 

Just last week, the Interior Department finalized onshore reforms, spearheaded by Abbey, that will require more detailed environmental reviews, more public input and less use of a provision to streamline leasing (E&ENews PM, May 17).

 

Confirmed as BLM director in August 2009, Abbey spent more than 32 years working with state and federal land management agencies before retiring from the federal government in July 2005. He then became a partner at Abbey, Stubbs & Ford LLC, where he was a private consultant specializing in Western land and resource strategies (Greenwire, June 10, 2009).

 

 

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 (05/28/2010)

Noelle Straub, E&E reporter

Bob Abbey, who heads the federal agency that oversees onshore drilling, will serve as acting director of the Minerals Management Service after its chief was forced to resign yesterday amid withering criticism of the agency's shoddy oversight of offshore drilling.

 

Abbey will remain director of the Bureau of Land Management while he leads MMS, but will turn over his daily management duties to his deputy, Mike Poole.

 

"Bob Abbey's recent leadership on onshore energy reforms is exactly the kind of experience we need as we continue to reform and begin to restructure MMS," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "I appreciate Bob's willingness to help tackle this crisis in the Gulf."

 

Abbey will begin the process of managing the reorganization of MMS into three separate agencies, the department said. Salazar has signed a secretarial order splitting up the leasing, enforcement and revenue collection duties of MMS into three different bureaus.

 

Given his new appointment, Abbey is returning to Washington from the Incident Command Center in Louisiana, where he has been helping lead Interior's response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

 

Liz Birnbaum was forced to resign yesterday after 11 months as head of the MMS. In a statement thanking President Obama for the "great privilege" of presiding over MMS, Birnbaum said she had inherited a flawed agency (Greenwire, May 27).

 

The former head attorney at the conservation group American Rivers, Birnbaum brought little managerial experience with her to MMS and had come under criticism for taking a back seat to other officials in response to the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that began when BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.

 

MMS has been slammed for cozy relationships with industry and stories of sex, pornography viewing and drug use.

 

Just last week, the Interior Department finalized onshore reforms, spearheaded by Abbey, that will require more detailed environmental reviews, more public input and less use of a provision to streamline leasing (E&ENews PM, May 17).

 

Confirmed as BLM director in August 2009, Abbey spent more than 32 years working with state and federal land management agencies before retiring from the federal government in July 2005. He then became a partner at Abbey, Stubbs & Ford LLC, where he was a private consultant specializing in Western land and resource strategies (Greenwire, June 10, 2009).

 

 

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