Dems request probe of offshore agency reorganization

Top lawmakers said the Interior Department's decision to merge two offshore regulators could weaken federal oversight.

July 08, 2026

Top Democrats on Wednesday called on Congress' watchdog to investigate the Trump administration’s decision to merge two existing bureaus within the Interior Department to oversee offshore oil and gas, wind and mining.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and House Natural Resources ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether a consolidation could undermine beefed up oversight created after the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil disaster in 2010.

The letter — also signed by California Democrats Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Luz Rivas — zeroes in on the administration’s decision in April to consolidate the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to create a new Marine Minerals Administration.

The lawmakers told acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, who heads GAO, that merging the agencies “raises serious concerns about whether Interior is collapsing the firewall between resource development and independent safety oversight that was established after Deepwater Horizon.”

They also questioned why Interior was pushing a merger and workforce reductions while at the same time expanding the scope of the new bureau to include offshore critical mineral leasing.

The administration is proposing to reduce BOEM and BSEE staff by a combined 20 percent. The House's fiscal 2027 Interior-Environment spending bill does not mention the merger but proposes to cut BOEM spending by 20 percent and BSEE by 11 percent. The Senate has yet to release any of its spending bills for the coming fiscal year.

Interior has not issued further announcements about the planned merger since April, and on Tuesday the department did not respond to questions about its status.

During a hearing in May, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum addressed the reorganization and staffing cuts. He pointed to centralizing communications, information technology and human resources employees within his office.

“The intention here … is to get more people that are actually in the jobs that actually matter,” Burgum said, adding that he wants “more inspectors.”

A 2011 federal investigation following the Deepwater Horizon spill found that tasking the same office with leasing and safety responsibilities caused “internal tensions and a confusion of goals that weakened the agency’s effectiveness and made it more susceptible to outside pressures.”

The lead investigator of that Obama-era bipartisan commission called the current merger plan — which was first contemplated during the first Trump administration — "exceedingly reckless."

But others, like former longtime offshore energy regulator Walter Cruickshank have said safety could still be a focus for the new agency if it's designed properly.

In April, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, accused Burgum of ignoring the law by not notifying Congress in advance of its planned merger.

Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for GAO, confirmed the agency received the probe request. “GAO has a process it goes through to determine whether we do work and when, which we are working through right now,” said Kaczmarek.

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By:  Hannah Northey and Ian Stevenson
Source: PoliticoPro