They’re Kidding, Right?
From McClatchy: Congress wants to know why MMS aborted tougher drilling rules
Staffers from the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, who traveled to Louisiana this week to sit in on the U.S. Coast Guard-led inquiry into the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig, said they learned from the testimony of Mike Saucier, an MMS regional supervisor for field operations, that new rules had been proposed.
Saucier said the agency prepared but never completed regulations in 2001, the first year of George W. Bush’s presidency, that would have required secondary control systems for blowout preventers.
“As far as I know, they’re still at headquarters,” Saucier said.
The executive branch was headed by two oil guys and people are asking why increased regulation of oil companies didn’t take place? Face it, if the Minerals Management Service wasn’t a convenient place for oil companies to dump people who needed more training, Cheney would have abolished it altogether.
