House GOP subpoenas Obama administration on oil drilling

A House committee issued subpoenas Tuesday demanding the Obama administration turn over documents Republicans say will show the backroom negotiations that led to President Obama’s Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium in 2010. The move comes as President Obama and Republicans are arguing over the administration’s pace in leasing federal lands for energy development at a time of sharply rising gasoline prices. The subpoenas seek to uncover how the Interior Department edited the report that it issued when it announced a six-month drilling moratorium following the BP oil spill. Some of the documents have been obtained by the department’s own inspector general, but the department has prevented them from being given to Congress. The report accompanying the moratorium appeared to imply that a panel of engineers the administration consulted had agreed with the drilling ban — though the engineers later said they opposed the moratorium and had concluded that drilling generally was safe enough to continue...more