In a speech last week on the disaster unfolding in the Gulf, President Obama told the nation that for decades, there existed a “scandalously close relationship between oil companies and the agency that regulates them,” and that he took responsibility for a culture that had “not fully changed” [1] under his administration.

On that subject—the culture of coziness between the Minerals Management Service and industry—a non-profit Wyoming news service WyoFile [2] published a report today that details some of the ties between MMS internal culture, the state of Wyoming, and the state’s native son, Dick Cheney. From WyoFile [3]:

The elite among Wyoming’s legal and engineering professions, including several governors (past and present), have worked for energy industry clients. As a result, presidential administrations seeking an appointee sympathetic to the energy industry can find a plethora of candidates in Wyoming.

The Wyoming connection was especially evident from 2000 to 2008, during the two administrations of President George W. Bush and his vice president, Wyoming native Dick Cheney. A former chief executive of Halliburton, Cheney took an early and very active interest in energy policy and placed several Wyoming political friends in key positions in the Department of Interior.

Cheney drew on his Wyoming ties to help fill the Interior Department’s top spots:

Cheney then chose Thomas Sansonetti, a prominent Cheyenne lawyer and GOP activist, to head the team choosing top personnel for the Department of Interior, which oversees Minerals Management Service.

the rest of the story …