Interior Department: Oil Regulators Overworked, Undertrained

The U.S. government's top regulator for offshore oil and gas drilling rarely conducts surprise inspections, routinely fails to follow up on noncompliance violations and has not adequately trained its work force, according to a new report from the U.S. Interior Department. The 37-page report, released Wednesday by the department's Outer Continental Shelf Safety Oversight Board, provides a bare-bones look at a group of regulators who are often overworked and undertrained and yet are charged with approving multibillion-dollar drilling projects and enforcing safety and environmental rules. Bromwich said in the conference call with reporters that his bureau had already begun tackling some of the problems identified in the report, calling the findings "relevant and extremely timely." The report takes a particularly close look at the permitting process, in which government staff are plagued by an increasingly large workload...more

I guess the new name wasn't enough.