Asshat Award

Chris Oynes, who oversees offshore drilling programs at the Minerals Management Service, will retire at the end of the month, according to an e-mail sent by an agency official to staff and obtained by The Associated Press. Oynes was regional director in charge of Gulf of Mexico offshore oil programs for 13 years before he was promoted in 2007 to associate director in charge of all offshore activities. During his tenure, he was involved in a monumental blunder that cost the American Taxpayer about 10 billion large. The Inspector General called it "a jaw-dropping example of bureaucratic bungling." Oynes awarded the Deepwater Horizon his coveted Safe Award in 2009. And he was prescient, it was about to get deep on the horizon. Real Deep.

From the MMS website: 
Mr. Chris Oynes was named in 2007 as the Associate Director of the Offshore Energy and Minerals Management Program. His responsibilities include administering the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas program as well as developing and implementing the new alternative energy program in the Federal OCS. Mr. Oynes had served as the Regional Director of the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) Gulf of Mexico OCS Region in New Orleans for 12 years and previously as the Deputy Regional Director. His involvement with the MMS has covered a wide range of issues. He has been actively involved in how MMS conducts its resource projections and its environmental reviews, and the operational safeguards it imposes. During his tenure in the GOM, he conducted 30 lease sales and
oversaw a 50 percent rise in oil production.


Mr. Oynes has more than 30 years of Federal Government experience in a wide range of energy matters, including 13 years in Washington, D.C., with MMS in various capacities. This included serving as MMS’s Chief of the Leasing Division.


He previously received a 1998 Presidential Rank Award as a Meritorious Executive for his work in the SES. He has received the two highest honor awards that the U.S. Department of the Interior bestows–the Distinguished Service Award and the Meritorious Service Award.


Mr. Oynes has been a frequent speaker at major conferences including five previous presentations at the Offshore Technology Conference, the largest gathering of offshore personnel in the world. He has given presentations at the Baker Institute at Rice University, the 1998 Deep Offshore Technology Conference, the International Pipeline Conference, the 2002 International Workshop on Human Factors in Offshore Operations, the Houston Geologic Society, as well as the Pew Ocean Commission. Mr. Oynes holds a Juris Doctor Degree from George Washington University and a BA in Political Science from California State University at Fullerton.

Now don't you just know that he had been planning to retire for months? At at least as soon as he managed to get his lips pried off the drillers' sweaty buttocks.