Watching Government: ONRR supplies rest of story

July 25, 2011
The US House Natural Resources Committee (NRC) on July 15 heard from Michael R. Bromwich, director of the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, about the ongoing reorganization of the former US Minerals Management Service.

Nick Snow
Washington Editor

The US House Natural Resources Committee (NRC) on July 15 heard from Michael R. Bromwich, director of the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, about the ongoing reorganization of the former US Minerals Management Service. It also received what radio newscaster Paul Harvey would have called "the rest of the story."

When US Interior Sec. Ken Salazar launched MMS's reorganization on May 19, 2010, one of his first steps was to move its revenue and royalty-collection responsibility out of the agency. He believed that it conflicted with MMS's other roles of leasing offshore federal oil, gas, and mineral resources. Salazar already had said he was ending the agency's royalty-in-kind program.

Under Secretarial Order 3299, MMS's revenue and royalty collection task moved to the US Department of the Interior's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget where it became the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). Its director, Gregory J. Gould, and his staff have been busy ever since.

They started with a strategic review to assess potential improvements and develop a framework to guide decision-making and establish priorities, Gould said in written testimony submitted to NRC because he was unable to attend the hearing in person. "More importantly, [it] renewed a sense of ownership, optimism, and enthusiasm across the organization," he noted.

ONRR completed the strategic review's first phase in January. Its high-impact initiatives included enhancing data-mining efforts to improve the accuracy of data lessees report, sharing more data with the US Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Affairs, and identifying high-risk payers to assure collection what's due, Gould said.

Following recommendations

The strategic review also let the new agency prioritize recommendations from the Government Accountability Office and DOI's Office of Inspector General (OIG), he told the committee. ONRR has implemented 5 of GAO's high-risk report's 11 recommendations, scheduled 5 more for implementation during fiscal 2012, and planned completion of a recent recommendation for 2013, he said.

Of 17 recommendations OIG made in six audits, reviews, or evaluations since 2008, ONRR has implemented 10, scheduled 4 for implementation this year, and will implement the other 3 next year, according to Gould.

He said ONRR recently published two proposed rulemaking notices seeking comments on simplifying valuation of oil and gas produced on federal leases and coal on federal and American Indian leases.

"The goal is to make the regulations easy to understand, reduce the government's and industry's cost of compliance, and provide early certainty to industry and ONRR that companies have paid what they owe the American taxpayers," Gould said.

That last part, essentially, is this new agency's bottom line.

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