The incoming Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday predicted he would secure bipartisan support for further investigation of alleged mismanagement at the now-reorganized Minerals Management Service.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, set to take the helm of the oversight panel in January, is a longtime critic of the offshore drilling regulatory arm that was renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in June. In an interview yesterday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Issa said that examining BOEMRE and its earlier lapses would be a top priority for the committee.

When Issa grabs the gavel from the outgoing chairman, Rep. Ed Towns (D-N.Y.), "my hope is that everything that was bipartisan before is going to be bipartisan again. And I think it will be. ... We're going to work first on the things that we agree need to be fixed."

Issa's first example, he told Blitzer: MMS. The California Republican described the regulator as "a corrupted organization under President Bush's watch," pinning part of the blame on Congress for neglecting to force reform long before this summer's Gulf of Mexico oil gusher.

A series of inspector general and Government Accountability Office reports have taken aim at MMS's internal culture of coziness between regulators and oil industry officials. After uncovering sex, drug use and illegal gifts scandals at MMS in 2008, the IG followed in May with a look at ongoing "fraternizing and gift exchange" among regional drilling regulators and the firms they were hired to police (Greenwire, May 25).

Issa's relish for pursuing what he termed "corrupt" actions by the Obama administration has won him a reputation for partisan combativeness, but he cited offshore drilling regulation as an area where apparent failings took root under both parties' leadership.

"I've got to recognize just as the problem in the Gulf from MMS began on President Bush or maybe even President Clinton's watch, that I have got to be fair and bipartisan," Issa told CNN. "And if we need reforms, we need reforms for all presidents, not just this one."

Yesterday was not Issa's first vow to delve more deeply into BOEMRE's internal culture. In an earlier interview with Blitzer, he described the summertime Gulf of Mexico oil gusher as a product of "MMS's failures ever since Reagan put them in business" (Greenwire, Oct. 26). In addition, he has proposed legislation that would remove BOEMRE from Interior oversight and make it an independent agency.

Issa also said ongoing scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration, on which he and Towns have cooperated this year, would be high on the oversight committee's agenda next year.