The presidential panel investigating the BP PLC oil spill said today that federal offshore-drilling regulators' lack of resources and political backing contributed to the government's failure to properly oversee the oil and gas industry.

In the oil spill commission's first public discussion of its initial findings, commissioners said the Minerals Management Service, the former Interior Department agency tasked with overseeing offshore oil and gas drilling, was underfunded, understaffed and overworked.

Panel members suggested beefing up funding and training support for MMS's successor agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, but outside of the quagmire of congressional appropriations.

"I'd like to see the regulator better budgeted and better compensated," said William Reilly, who was U.S. EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush and co-chairman of the spill panel. "But I don't think we see that kind of support for federal employees."

The panel is compiling a report and list of recommendations for President Obama in the wake of BP's rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. The final report is due in January, and today's discussion laid the groundwork for some of the recommendations to avoid future disasters the panel is expected to make.

But much of the discussion was bogged down in a debate over national energy policy.

Reilly said, "We're headed toward a time when offshore oil will constitute the vast majority of domestic oil and gas production."

But other commissioners, including Cherry Murray, dean of Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said the report should detail the existence of other technologies that have allowed greater production from onshore resources.

"The hazards of ultra-deepwater drilling need to be detailed in these findings," Murray said. "There are technologies to help extract more resources from the land. It all depends on the cost."

She added, "My sense is we should at least point out these other technologies."

Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs at the National Geographic Society, said, "We should be careful how far we take that discussion on national energy policy. It's good to know that's what's driving offshore drilling, but at the end of the day, this report should be about how to prevent or mitigate future instances."

And Reilly agreed: "That's certainly what the president had in mind when he said, 'Don't write me a new energy policy.'"