The House Natural Resources Committee has been investigating changes made to a report that suggested the post-Macondo well blowout moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico was supported by a panel of engineering experts, when in fact it wasn’t.

The Interior Department did not meet the noon deadline Tuesday to turn over to the House Natural Resources Committee subpoenaed documents related to the imposition of the May 2010 moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

“We haven’t received anything yet” from Interior, a spokesman for the committee said at approximately 5 p.m. EDT. Interior did not respond to NGI’s request for a comment.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week referred to the subpoena as “simply a distraction in the name of politics…but we will do everything we can to cooperate with the committee.” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

The committee earlier this month subpoenaed documents related to a report that was allegedly altered by the Obama administration to suggest that the National Academy of Engineering had endorsed the moratorium on deepwater drilling (see Daily GPI, March 30). The House panel said it has sought documents for more than a year.

In July 2010 two Republicans on the committee, including now Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA), called on Interior Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall to open an investigation into allegations that the administration altered peer-reviewed recommendations by experts in a report to justify the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the GOM (see Daily GPI, July 23, 2010).

Kendall’s office concluded later in 2010 that the White House changed the Interior report to suggest that experts peer reviewed and supported the administration’s decision to impose a blanket moratorium on drilling in the GOM (see Daily GPI, Nov. 12, 2010). The Obama administration said the alteration was due to “last minute editing,” but Hastings’ committee is trying to determine whether there was more involved.

Interior issued the report imposing the moratorium in May 2010 following the Macondo well blowout that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig (see Daily GPI, April 22, 2010). In the report, Interior said it drew expertise from “within the federal government, academia, professional engineers, industry and other governments’ regulatory programs.” In particular, the report said seven members of the National Academy of Engineering peer-reviewed the recommendations, making it appear as if they supported the proposal to impose a drilling moratorium.

However, the peer reviewers were not in fact asked to evaluate the drilling ban, which was inserted into the report shortly before it was finalized and without any scientific or technical review or analysis of economic impacts, according to the committee.

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