Elizabeth Birnbaum, head of the agency that oversees drilling for oil and natural gas, was asked to resign from her post this morning by the Obama administration. She had held the job since 2009, and had overseen the agency during the Deepwater Horizon’s drilling ventures.

"Elizabeth Birnbaum is a strong and effective person and leader," Salazar said in a statement. "She helped break through tough issues including offshore renewable development and helped us take important steps to fix a broken system. She is a good public servant. She resigned today on her own terms and on her own volition. I thank her for her service and wish her the very best."

The departure of Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a congressional hearing where Birnbaum had been scheduled to testify but didn’t show up.

Birnbaum, who had led MMS since July 2009, left after she and her agency came under withering criticism from lawmakers of both parties over allegedly lax oversight of drilling and cozy ties with industry. Salazar recently announced he was radically restructuring the agency into three separate parts.

In a three-sentence resignation letter to Salazar, Birnbaum wrote: “As you move forward with the reorganization of Minerals Management Service you will be requiring three new leaders ... I wish you every good fortune in the reorganization of the bureau.”

On Tuesday, a New York Times profile of Birnbaum questioned whether she “is up to the task of remaking the Minerals Management Service, an agency widely recognized as one of the most dysfunctional in government.” While her colleagues called her tough and smart, the story said:

Agency scientists and other employees complained that since taking the post in July, Ms. Birnbaum has done almost nothing to fix problems that have plagued the minerals agency for over a decade. She rarely visited the agency’s far-flung offices, so few staff members have ever seen her. The same agency managers who during the Bush administration ignored or suppressed scientists’ concerns about the safety and environmental risks of some off-shore drilling plans are still there doing the same things, they said.





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