Minerals Management Service

(US GOVERNMENT) Agency of the US Department of the Interior. The name has since been changed to "Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement" (BOEMRE). The laws related to minerals management in the United States are possibly the most poorly thought-out in the developed world, and were largely designed as a strategy to launder money through crooked politicians. The MMS was created manage the oceanic coastal shelf (OCS) resources, and naturally it became one of the most notorious dens of corruption seen in the entire world.

The MMS is set up so that the temptation to be sleazy is almost impossible to resist; indeed, taking bribes is practically standard operating procedure in this agency. That's because the MMS was responsible for enforcing environmental and safety regulations on things like offshore drilling platforms, and yet made its income from revenues from the lessors it was regulating.

MMS officials would actually let oil company staff fill out inspection checklists in pencil, so that MMS inspectors would then fill them out as the operators wanted.

Given Minerals Management Service pencil whipping in the Gulf prospects*, it was a miracle that Transocean was ever cited for safety violations at all.

MMS is famous for parties in which executives of oil companies went drabbing with federal managers.
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*Here, a prospect is an area where oil prospecting occurs

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