When Ken Salazar arrived at the US Department of the Interior in early 2009, there were comparisons to a sheriff of the Old West, determined to clean things up and run the bad guys out of town. He made it clear that parts of Interior troubled him, and promised reforms.
He quickly antagonized Utah's largely Republican congressional delegation when he canceled oil and gas leases issued at a Bureau of Land Management sale a few months earlier that he felt was based on hastily prepared resource management plans.
Then Salazar stopped development of a 5-year Outer Continental Shelf program his predecessor, Dirk A. Kempthorne, had begun ahead of schedule because crude oil prices had spiked again and Kempthorne believed more US offshore areas should be considered for possible leasing.
Salazar returned to the original schedule, broadened the program to include wind power, and pledged more opportunities for public involvement earlier in the process. He and then-BLM Director Robert V. Abbey adopted the last strategy onshore to curb lawsuits.
Critics charged he was blocking programs Congress had approved in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Salazar responded that he wanted to take the time necessary to do things right.
His biggest concern was the US Minerals Management Service, which Salazar said was caught in a conflict of interests since it promoted federal offshore resource development, regulated operations, and collected revenue. His first step was to move MMS's third responsibility to another Interior division in a new Office of Natural Resources Revenue.
Then came Macondo
But Salazar's biggest oil and gas test came in late April 2010 with the Macondo deepwater well blowout, explosion, and oil spill. He ordered Gulf of Mexico oil and gas operations shut down and installed Michael R. Bromwich as director of the renamed MMS—the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement—to oversee a thorough safety and environmental review.
Critics charged he took too long to allow exploration and production to resume in the gulf. Salazar said environmental organizations felt he hadn't taken long enough.
In October 2011, BOEMRE spilt into separate agencies: the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which handles leasing, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. By the time Bromwich left Interior a few months later, new offshore oil and gas leaseholders had to show they could cap and contain leaks before they could even start drilling.
Less dramatic but equally significant was establishment of a federal permit coordination group under Deputy Sec. David J. Hayes to help producers deal with multiple agencies. Salazar's other Interior efforts matter too, but he clearly has made noteworthy changes involving oil and gas.
