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The federal agency responsible for regulating offshore oil drilling repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.

Minerals Management Service officials, who receive cash bonuses for meeting federal deadlines on leasing offshore oil and gas exploration, frequently altered their own documents and bypassed legal requirements aimed at ensuring drilling does not imperil the marine environment, the documents show. Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post 05/24/2010
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The U.S. government is ordering energy giant BP to find less-toxic chemicals to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill amid evidence that the dispersants are not effective and could actually make the spill more harmful to marine life.

The Environmental Protection Agency said that BP has to choose an alternative dispersant and must begin using it. So far, BP has put about 600,000 gallons of the chemical mixture Corexit 9500 on the surface and 55,000 gallons on the sea bottom.

Dispersants are toxic, and when mixed with oil can become even more dangerous than either the dispersant or oil alone, according to EPA data.

The decision by BP and federal officials to use the chemical dispersant Corexit to break up oil spewing in the Gulf of Mexico is drawing fire from congress who say there are more powerful, less toxic dispersants that could be used to combat the crude.

Environmentalists have raised warnings about the risk that dispersants can be stored indefinitely in the organs and tissues of marine animals.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has acknowledged the threat in describing the use of dispersants as a trade- off between the harm of allowing oil to accumulate and the possible damage to marine life from the detergent-like substance.

Several prominent oceanographers are claiming that the government is failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and allowing BP to block the spill’s true size and scope.

The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean.

And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.

Read the full story here at the New York Times

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greatly expanded the fishing ban in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday in response to spreading oil from the BP well blowout. The prohibited area now covers 19 percent of the gulf, nearly double what it was, according to the agency.

In Washington, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appeared before Congress for the first time since the well exploded a month ago. Mr. Salazar acknowledged that the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for policing offshore drilling, had been weakened by corruption and lax enforcement of safety and environmental rules.

Read the full New York Times story here.