We reviewed the process the DOI’s Executive Resources Board (ERB) used to reassign senior executives to determine whether the ERB complied with Federal legal requirements and U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance. Although the Deputy Solicitor expressed his belief that the process met all legal requirements, absent documentation, we could not independently determine whether or not the ERB complied with the Federal legal requirements governing the administration of the Senior Executive Service (SES).

The OIG investigated allegations that a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) senior official approved or directed the approval of two drawdowns totaling approximately $3.1 million from an Operation, Maintenance, and Replacement (OMR) Trust Fund designated for a regional rural water system (RWS) at a time when the RWS was years from completion and had few, if any, OMR expenses.

The OIG initiated an investigation after an inventory of a safe located in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Office of Law Enforcement and Security (OLES), found that thousands of dollars in gift cards were unaccounted for. We found 119 gift cards in the safe, valued at $2,345, and property receipts that indicated more than $10,000 in gift cards had been provided to a former OLES official and another BLM employee to use towards official purchases.

OIG investigated allegations that offshore oil and gas company employees and contractors illegally discharged oil into the Gulf of Mexico. We determined offshore workers Luke Ball, Darryl Plaisance, and William Smith intentionally discharged oil into the Gulf while operating aboard a platform located on a Federal lease. All three individuals were criminally charged by a Federal grand jury in the Western District of Louisiana. Ball and Plaisance pled guilty to making a knowing discharge of a pollutant, and Smith pled guilty to making a negligent discharge of a pollutant into the Gulf.

We completed a verification review of Recommendations 58 to 64, presented in our evaluation report, A New Horizon: Looking to the Future of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (CR-EV-MMS-0015-2010), issued December 2010. Our objective for this review was to determine whether the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had implemented Recommendations 58 to 64, as reported to the Office of Financial Management, Office of Policy, Management and Budget. We concur that these recommendations have been resolved and implemented.