Interior's Offshore-Drilling Chief:Reviewing BP's Liberty Project

24th Jun 2010 16:36

By Siobhan Hughes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The new head of the Interior Department's offshore-drilling agency said he is looking into regulatory approvals of a BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) project to drill in Alaskan waters. Michael Bromwich, the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, told Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) at a Senate hearing that "we've already called out to our regional office in Alaska to get to the bottom of this very quickly." A New York Times article on Thursday said that BP's Liberty project was exempt from the Obama administration's recent moratorium on drilling in Arctic waters and was treated as an onshore project because the project sits atop an artificial island built by BP. The article also said that federal regulators had in 2007 allowed BP to write its own environmental review for the project rather than conducting their own independent analysis. The agency, formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, is "required to do its own independent work," Bromwich said. He said that he was "troubled" about the suggestion that didn't happen. "This is what I'm going to get to the bottom of but right now I don't have the answers for you," Bromwich said. -By Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6654; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 24, 2010 11:36 ET (15:36 GMT)