WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A late-night edit made an Obama administration report imposing a U.S. deepwater-drilling freeze wrongly appear backed by scientists, an inspector general said.
But the edit, made by an unidentified White House official at 2:13 a.m. May 27, did not violate the U.S. Information Quality Act barring federal agencies from releasing deliberately misleading information, acting U.S. Interior Department Inspector General Mary Kendall said.
The report, which suggested an independent peer-review group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil spill, "could have been more clearly worded," Kendall said.
But it didn't violate the law, and "the department also appears to have adequately remedied the (Information Quality Act) concerns by communicating directly with the experts, offering a formal apology and publicly clarifying the nature of the peer review," Kendall said.
Some scientists who complained about the report said they accepted that the mistake was inadvertent and were ready to move on.
But U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the report confirmed "what I suspected all along: Obama administration officials appear to have deliberately disregarded the Information Quality Act to push their destructive moratorium that has crushed job growth along the Gulf Coast," The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., added: "The administration needs to come clean and explain to the American people why they manipulated the peer-reviewed data to reach a political conclusion that is still keeping thousands of people from working safely in the energy industry."
The administration, which lifted the moratorium Oct. 12, imposed it after the blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico April 20. The blowout led to the largest maritime oil spill in U.S. history.
The White House quickly came under intense pressure from the oil and gas industry and from regional officials and businesses, who have complained about the moratorium's economic damage.
