Lax oversight and political pressure. Cozy government and industry relationships.
The deadly Deepwater Horizon offshore oil disaster in 2010 spurred a reckoning with what investigators called systemic problems with the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with overseeing oil and gas leasing in federal waters.
In the months after the largest oil spill in U.S. history, the Obama administration split apart offshore regulators into three separate agencies, responding to a detailed report from an independent commission and several investigations by the Interior Department’s inspector general.
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Now the Trump administration wants to put it back together.
