The conclusion of a New York Times article on the actions of the Minerals Management Service office in Alaska left a bad taste in many mouths.
Shortly after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar proposed reconfiguring the agency, John Goll, the head of the Alaska region, called an “all hands” meeting, according to a staff member there.
Afterward, people lingered to eat a cake decorated with the words, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
Interesting choice of cake decoration by an agency pushing drilling in the Arctic Ocean while oil chokes the Gulf of Mexico.
The Center for Biological Diversity was unamused, calling for Goll to be fired.
Alaska Regional Director John Goll allowed the cake to be served at an all-staff meeting he called to discuss Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's decision to reform the agency in the wake of the Gulf oil spill disaster and a rapidly growing scandal caused by what President Obama describes as the agency's "too cozy" relationship with the offshore oil industry.
"Instead of apologizing for baked goods, Mr. Goll should apologize for overriding scientists, kowtowing to the oil industry, and putting Alaska's wildlife and communities at risk of a catastrophic oil spill," said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The head of MMS's Alaska region since 1997, Mr. Goll recently approved a highly controversial and dangerous plan by Shell Oil to begin exploratory drilling in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas this July. He has refused repeated calls to revoke Shell's permits in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico crisis even though oil spill clean up would be vastly more difficult in the frigid, icy waters of the Arctic than in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Secretary Salazar should fire Mr. Goll immediately," said Suckling. "Goll's mocking of the secretary's plan to reform the agency by telling his employees to "Drill, Baby, Drill" is not just poor taste; it's clear evidence that Mr. Goll has no intention of being reformed. He symbolizes the scandal ridden, industry-dominated MMS of the past. He has no place in the agency's future."
Goll's lame apology consisted of:
From: Goll, John
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 7:53 AM
To: MMS Employees Nationwide
Subject: Apology to MMS
As the manager in charge of the Alaska Region, I apologize to
everyone in the Minerals Management Service with regard to the
cake at a recent Alaska Region All Hands meeting, as reported in
a New York Times article today. The cake had the words "Drill,
Baby, Drill', plus other words which were meant to take light of
the words.
This was simply wrong to have. I failed in preventing this from
happening in my office.
jg
John Goll
Regional Director, Alaska
U.S. Minerals Management Service
Goll's choice of baked goods should be grounds for reprimand, but the performance of his regional office has been reckless and warrants his removal. In a report by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), here are some allegations made by scientists under Goll's half-baked leadership.
INTERIOR COOKING BOOKS ON ALASKA OFFSHORE ECO-ANALYSES — Interior Had Critical GAO Report Weeks before Unveiling Offshore Drilling Plans
Washington, DC — Scientists are subjected to U.S. Interior Department management practices that “hindered their ability to complete sound environmental analyses” in reviewing Alaskan offshore drilling projects, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today. The report confirms scientists’ accounts channeled through Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) that Interior managers routinely “suppressed” critical findings on issues ranging from the likelihood of oil spills to acoustic damage to whales to introduction of invasive species.
Top Interior Department officials have had this critical GAO report for several weeks before the agency unveiled a major expansion of offshore drilling in coastal waters, including the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) last week. While the Interior Department in its comments stated that it agreed with the GAO report, it has left the same management structure that obstructed honest reviews in charge of its Alaska offshore projects. The GAO report made several critical findings, including:
Management pressure resulted in scientific reviews of the environmental impacts of Alaskan offshore oil drilling that were so incomplete that they have been largely invalidated in court rulings in lawsuits brought by environmentalists;
Scientists were under pressure to churn out reviews that omitted important environmental concerns. In reaction, many scientists left the Alaska OCS Office of the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency issuing offshore drilling permits. “From 2003 to 2008, 11 to 50 percent of the analysts in that section left each year,” according to the report; and
Interior officials allowed scientists access to project data only on a “need to know” basis in order to protect what they believed to be the proprietary nature of oil industry information.
The report conclusion is more disturbing than Goll's cake.
“Scientists remain as vulnerable to political pressure today in the Obama administration as they did under Bush,” Ruch added. “Without accountability for past abuses, it is difficult to take pledges of reform seriously.”
The quote is not hyperbolic. The U.S. Inspector General issued a report in April that raised serious concerns about the continuing lack of objective standards for scientific conduct at the Department of Interior. These concerns come as reports have surfaced of scientists raising objections to drilling plans under review by the MMS only to be overruled by managers.
The lack of clear guidance in the environmental review process was exacerbated by high turnover among scientists at the agency, many of whom said in interviews that they left for other jobs because they had been pressured to rewrite their work or had it rewritten for them and that they were perceived as obstacles in the way of drilling. Managers, on the other hand, tended to stay.
“My impression was they had predetermined decisions and if you didn’t get with the program you were sort of labeled and ostracized, really,” said one former minerals agency scientist. “But if you went along with the program and didn’t do anything to obstruct anything, they would treat you well, promote you, give cash awards.”
New York Times article by William Yardley
Here is a summary of questions about the Alaska regional office in the GAO report in March.
GAO found that MMS faces challenges in the Alaska OCS Region in carrying out its responsibilities under NEPA. Although Interior policy directs its agencies to prepare handbooks providing guidance on how to implement NEPA, MMS lacks such a guidance handbook. The lack of a comprehensive guidance handbook, combined with high staff turnover in recent years, has left the process for meeting NEPA requirements ill defined for the analysts charged with developing NEPA documents. This absence has also left unclear MMS’s policy on what constitutes a significant environmental impact. Furthermore, guidance is also lacking for conducting and documenting NEPA-required analyses to address environmental and cultural sensitivities, which have often been the topic of litigation over Alaskan offshore oil and gas development. In addition to litigation, MMS has been subjected to allegations by stakeholders and former MMS scientists of suppression or alteration of their work on environmental issues. GAO also found that the Alaska OCS Region shares information selectively. This practice is inconsistent with agency policy, which directs that information, including proprietary data from industry, be shared with all staff involved in environmental reviews. According to regional staff, this practice has hindered their ability to complete sound environmental analyses under NEPA.
The lack of due diligence on the part of the Alaska office has helped set the stage for a political tug-of-war on offshore drilling in Alaskan waters. Democrats have led a call for extending the drilling moratorium until the safety and environmental studies are conducted properly.
The lawmakers also argue that drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska’s coast is made riskier by the tough conditions. “Hazards present in the Arctic can include frigid temperatures, presence of sea ice, gale-force winds, intense storms, and heavy fog,” the letter states.
On the other side, drilling proponents in the Senate from four Gulf States and Alaska demanded lifting the moratorium for offshore drilling projects in waters shallower than the Deepwater Horizon fiasco.
But in a letter to Salazar Friday, 10 senators write that shallow water drilling doesn’t present the same risks as deepwater projects. The damaged BP well currently leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is 5,000 feet below the surface.
“[W]e are very concerned that the moratorium is far too broad and unnecessarily covers shallow water drilling activities that have operated without major incident for over 50 years,” states the letter.
It’s signed by Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), David Vitter (R-La.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska).
Never mind that that the potential threats to offshore drilling in ice-filled waters poses many unknowns in terms of safety and clean-up even in shallower waters. Perhaps it would be wise for Secretary Salazar to do more than split operations. It seems prudent to clean house of the managers in the Alaska regional office rather than assign them to new deck chairs. We are talking about sensitive environments, a failed regulatory process, and an office that seems to be the worst of the worst.
Let Shell have a tantrum about not being able to proceed with drilling plans in the Arctic Ocean. If Salazar agrees with the GAO report, then he should get the Alaskan regional operations in order before the moratorium is lifted and the permitting process allowed to continue. If would ironic if poorly chosen words on a cake rather failure to perform his duties ended up being the reason for John Goll to be removed.