MMS official apologizes for ‘drill, baby, drill’ cake

An official with the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service – the agency that regulates offshore drilling – is apologizing for allowing some ill-considered frosting into a meeting.

Newsweek and some other outlets obtained an email from John Goll, manager of MMS’s Alaska region, that Goll sent Thursday to MMS employees nationwide. It followed a New York Times story that revealed a cake with the worlds “Drill, Baby, Drill,” was served at recent meeting in the Alaska office.

Here’s the email:

From: Goll, John


To: MMS Employees Nationwide


Subject: Apology to MMS



As the manager in charge of the Alaska Region, I apologize to everyone in the Minerals Management Service with regard to the cake at a recent Alaska Region All Hands meeting, as reported in a New York Times article today. The cake had the words "Drill, Baby, Drill', plus other words which were meant to take light of the words. This was simply wrong to have. I failed in preventing this from happening in my office.



jg



John Goll


Regional Director, Alaska


U.S. Minerals Management Service

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar detailed plans this week to carve up the long-troubled MMS into three separate agencies. He said MMS – which sells offshore leases, collects royalties and regulates safety – suffers from conflicting missions.

The agency has for years been the subject of scathing reports by the Interior Department’s inspector general and congressional auditors. Criticism intensified further in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.