Fried Frank Partner Tapped to Overhaul Oil Agency
A partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson has been tapped to overhaul the federal agency that regulates oil companies.
Fried Frank litigation partner Michael Bromwich still doesn’t have a title for his job at the Minerals Management Service, which has been dissolved and split into three agencies, Greenwire reports. He won’t be directly running the agency, according to the National Law Journal.
But he is being asked to restore “integrity and rigor” to the relationship between MMS and the oil companies, criticized as too cozy by President Obama. In an Oval Office address last night, Obama said he wants Bromwich to “build an organization that acts as the oil industry’s watchdog—not its partner,” the Washington Post reports.
Bromwich oversees Fried Frank’s internal investigations, compliance and monitoring practice group. Greenwire calls Bromwich “a Washington lawyer with a reputation for fixing broken government agencies, but little or no background with energy or environmental issues.”
Bromwich helped prosecute Oliver North in the Iran-Contra investigation, served as inspector general for the U.S. Justice Department, and led an investigation into the Houston Police Department’s crime lab.
