The NewsRoom
Release #:  3073
Date: April 13, 2004

MMS Names New Regional Supervisor

Joseph A. Christopher has been appointed Regional Supervisor for the Office of Leasing and Environment in the Gulf of Mexico Region of the Minerals Management Service.  His responsibilities include managing the Region’s leasing and adjudication program and its environmental assessment and studies programs.  The office plans and conducts lease sales that offer tracts of submerged Federal lands for oil and gas exploration, development, and production in the Gulf of Mexico.  It evaluates the potential environmental effects that could result from these sales and subsequent industry activities to ensure compliance with appropriate laws and regulations and to avoid or minimize impacts.  The office also designs and oversees environmental studies performed under contract to ensure that the decisions of the MMS are based on sound science.

Mr. Christopher is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and attended the University of New Orleans where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Geography in 1978.  He also earned a Master of Arts in Management and Supervision from Central Michigan University in 1986.  Mr. Christopher has worked on OCS offshore oil and gas issues for the Department of the Interior for over 25 years.  Early in his career, he worked in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Conservation Division and the Bureau of Land Management’s New Orleans OCS Office.  He has been with the Minerals Management Service since its inception in 1983, where he has served as an environmental analyst, a unit supervisor, and for the last 13 years as Chief of the Environmental Assessment Section.  Mr. Christopher, his wife, Mary, and their three sons reside in Slidell, Louisiana.

The Minerals Management Service is the federal agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation’s oil, natural gas, and other mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in Federal offshore waters.  The agency also collects, accounts for, and disburses mineral revenues from Federal and American Indian lands.  MMS disbursed more than $8 billion in FY 2003 and more than $135 billion since the agency was created in 1982.  Nearly $1 billion from those revenues go into the Land and Water Conservation Fund annually for the acquisition and development of state and Federal park and recreation lands.      
                  

Relevant Web Sites

MMS Main Website

Gulf of Mexico Website
 

Media Contacts

Debra Winbush
(504) 736-2597 

Caryl Fagot
(504) 736-2590

MMS: Securing Ocean Energy & Economic Value for America
U.S. Department of the Interior