Officials raised specific concerns Congress concerning the safety of a second oil BP in the Gulf of the Mexico and the failure of regulators to spend millions of dollars approved for oil spill research, among other issues, according to e-mails between representatives of the Congress and the regulatory function of the minerals management platform as the Agency then called.
When CIDA officials told members of Congress in 2009 would not specifically respond to concerns about the possibility of a "catastrophic" on a second BP platform off the coast of New Orleans, called Atlantis, accident, some staff members were angry at what they saw as the obstruction.
"If I have this straight," aid to Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, wrote in an e-mail message to an official agency of minerals, "I tell my boss M.M.S. has nothing to say about this company Atlantis" beyond general observations which it has already taken?
Mail electronic and other recent correspondence between federal regulatory agencies and representatives of the Congress have been among the more than 5 400 pages of documents that the Ministry of the Interior for the New York Times under the freedom of information act.
Blast drilling deep horizon 20 April led to a careful examination of the relationship between the Federal regulatory agencies and the oil industry - a relationship critics say since always too comfortable. But much less attention has been paid for relationships with members of Congress, who also play an essential role in supervising regulators and to shape regulatory policies and priorities.
Offer documents one window regulators drilling and officers of Congress has been various tours, civil and commercial, distant and contentious relationship or, as is often the case in Washington, D.c., servile and caring when members were research to help a constituent business gain.
For example, when a businessman in Alaska was upset because her company aviation as an aerial survey contract closure, Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican urged regulatory authorities to reconsider the contract, emails show.
(The Ministry of the Interior stood by his decision, he told Mr. Stevens a 2008 letter company - whose owners had donated to Republican causes - had no safety and training equipment to do the job.)
Members and their assistants also went to regulators to get a jump on next drilling decisions which could have political implications, records show.
But at other times, federal regulatory agencies were struggling to get someone's attention on Capitol Hill, records show.
For example, minerals agency officials went to dozens of members of Congress on the relevant committees in the fall of 2009 to try to establish sessions meet and greet the newly appointed Director of the Agency, s. Elizabeth Birnbaum.
The majority of the members is passed to the invitation. "Unfortunately, Senator Bunning is able to meet Liz Birnbaum," a help Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, said. "Thank you for good offer."
But six months later, that BP disaster triggered one of the worst environmental disaster in American history, agency of Mrs. Birnbaum was apparently the world arose in Congress--with regulatory shortcomings suddenly under brutal control of politicians and the public.
Under fire, Mrs. Birnbaum quickly left his job, his agency was reorganized and renamed to try to avoid a repeat of the BP disaster and federal regulators there are hundreds of oil per day of Capitol Hill - accompanied by frequent notes sympathy - as oil spread applications.
"Hook," read an e-mail a staff member Congress an official agency of the minerals weeks after the spill.
But other officials of the Congress were less sympathetic, as they demanded that the Agency, now called the Office of the ocean, regulation and Enforcement Act, energy management turn its records regarding the approval of the project BP and other regulatory measures.
Records indicate that even after the spill, minerals agency officials have resisted turning on some recordings on the grounds that they detained "proprietary" information that belonged to BP.
But some information the Agency stood ready to provide is illuminating. In a letter of April 2009 regulators sent to BP approving exploration in the region where the later explosion took place, they urge BP "exercise caution during the drilling of gas hints at shallow depth and water flow as possible.
Various facets of the catastrophe of BP, including the exact cause of the explosion and anti-Eruption of the deep horizon shutter failure are still under investigation by a presidential commission and other investigative agencies. But the preliminary findings released last month found that the oil industry and the Government were captured prepared by the spill, delaying the response.
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