Nick Snow
Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, DC, May 9 -- US Minerals Management Service Director Johnnie Burton announced that she will retire at the end of May.
Burton, who became MMS director in March 2002, told Interior Sec. Dirk A. Kempthorne in her May 7 resignation letter that the job "has been the most rewarding, and often the most challenging, of my career."
Her replacement as MMS director has not been named.
Burton will be the second US Department of Interior agency chief involved with federal oil and gas resource management to leave in the last year.
US Bureau of Land Management Director Kathleen Clarke resigned on Dec. 28 to rejoin her family in Utah.
Burton's primary accomplishment as MMS director was completion of a 5-year federal Outer Continental Shelf leasing plan from July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2012, that includes new acreage in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, in the Bristol Bay area off Alaska's coast, and in the Atlantic Ocean off southeastern Virginia.
She also presided over 16 OCS sales and initiated royalty compliance program reforms to make it more effective and eliminate delays.
Burton was criticized when it was discovered that federal Gulf of Mexico deepwater leases which MMS issued in 1998 and 1999 did not contain price thresholds on their royalty exemptions.
Pointing out to angry members of Congress that the omissions took place during the Clinton administration, Burton ordered MMS to approach leaseholders and ask them to voluntarily negotiate new terms. Several leseholders have done this, and talks with others are continuing.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
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