Bye Bye, MMS - Yesterday The Alaska Gasline Team Received "Alaska Stand Alone Gas Pipeline Progress Report"

Bye Bye, MMS – Yesterday The Alaska Gasline Team Received “Alaska Stand Alone Gas Pipeline Progress Report”

ADN/AP by Frederick Frommer. The Minerals Management Service — well, the name anyway — now sits on the scrap heap of discarded monikers alongside ValuJet, Blackwater and Enron Field. Not that a new name makes it any easier for the Obama administration to convince a skeptical Congress that the agency will be any better at policing offshore drilling. … Michael R. Bromwich, the new head of the MMS — er, BOE — assured Congress that the change is much more than cosmetic…. One marketing expert told The Associated Press that the Obama administration has made a mistake by changing the name at a time when the agency is still the focus of negative attention. The danger, said Kelly O’Keefe, managing director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter, is that the new name gets tarnished with the old baggage. … Or, as "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart deadpanned last week, "Are we really that stupid?" "This isn’t just a name change or branding exercise," said Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff. The new name, she said, reflects Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s (NGP Photo) mission for the agency as it undergoes reorganization. Salazar plans to break up the agency into three separate entities to eliminate conflicts of interest.