The white lines are tracers for facers of the aftermath

The scandals in the Minerals Management Service have been widely documented now for quite a few years. But since this report is directly related to the New Orleans and Lake Charles offices, now is as good a time as ever to revisit these issues.

The investigation also uncovered evidence of illegal drug use by at least two MMS employees in Lake Charles, and the use of federal e-mail accounts by 13 employees in Lake Charles and New Orleans to receive or forward pornographic images and links to Internet sites with pornographic videos.

One inspector even conducted four inspections of Island Operating Company oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico while he was negotiating and later accepting a job offer from the company.

One confidential source told investigators that some inspectors allowed oil and gas company personnel to fill out their own inspection forms, which would then be completed or signed by the inspector and turned in for review.

Actually what they said about the inspection forms the meth-fiending inspectors handed over to company reps was this.

Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week.

So this afternoon when we read that another BP subsidiary (The United States Coast Guard) has approved the "Top Kill" well-plugging scheme we had to wonder what color pen they used to do the tracing.

Also I found this video of one Top Kill operation attempted some years ago on Nickelodeon with unfortunate results.



Whatever happened to Moose, anyway?