The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week is launching a probe into the Obama administration and BP PLC's efforts to restore the Gulf of Mexico after last year's oil spill.

The full committee meets Thursday to investigate progress made in cleaning up sullied waters and coastlines and rebuilding local economies.

The hearing comes more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, sparking the nation's worst oil spill that dumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into Gulf waters.

Scientists disagree on the level of damage the spill caused to wildlife and habitats, but the disaster had dire economic consequences for the Gulf region's fishing and tourism industries. The administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling also negatively affected the local economy.

The panel Thursday will likely delve into all those issues to gauge the level of impact Obama administration policies have had in both environmental and economic restoration efforts.

The committee will likely discuss efforts made by the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, a presidentially appointed body that is working to integrate federal restoration efforts with those of state and tribal governments. That body will hold its fourth meeting tomorrow, a day ahead of the hearing.

The GOP-led committee also will likely discuss the controversial claims fund set up by BP in the aftermath of the disaster to pay out economic damages caused by the spill.

And Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is sure to bring up one of his favorite topics: the controversy surrounding the Interior Department's oil and gas regulatory agency.

During a hearing earlier this year, Issa blasted the troubled agency, saying Congress could have stopped the spill from happening if it had stepped up its oversight of the then-named Minerals Management Service when problems first came to light in 2005.

"I would like to take this opportunity to be a little apologetic. Six years ago, when I was subcommittee chairman on Government Oversight, we had live testimony repeatedly by various people in the Department of the Interior ... on just how broken the system at [the now-defunct Minerals Management Service] was," Issa said, adding that if Congress had done a better job in 2005 on its oversight of MMS, "we would clearly have had an impact on what happened in the Gulf and probably would have stopped it, because the blowout preventers that failed in fact were determined to be questionable in 2003" (E&ENews PM, Feb. 16).

Since the spill occurred, the agency has been reorganized and renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. But many argue that more could be done to strengthen federal oversight of the oil and gas industry.

Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, June 2, at 9:30 a.m. in 2154 Rayburn.

Witnesses: TBA.