Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today he is splitting up the Minerals Management Service into three separate agencies. The proposal comes a day after he was grilled by lawmakers on his department's relationship with the oil and natural gas industry, which President Obama has said is too "cozy."

The three separate bureaus will oversee offshore energy development, enforce safety and environmental protections and collect revenue from oil and natural gas development. MMS as such -- an agency with a history of scandals -- will no longer exist.

"These three missions -- energy development, enforcement and revenue collecting -- are conflicting missions and must be separated," Salazar said at a press conference today. In a secretarial order signed today, Salazar has asked his staff to report back to him within a month on how to implement the restructuring.

Last week, Salazar said he was looking to split MMS into two agencies, one to handle enforcement and another to handle both energy development and revenues. Since then, the secretary decided it would be appropriate to split the agency further, severing the development function from revenue collection, a spokeswoman said.

At a hearing on the gulf oil spill Tuesday, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., pressed Salazar to consider creating an independent entity outside of the agency. "You've got the safety people around the corner from the other folks," Boxer said. "This is an ongoing nightmare. I would feel so much more confident... when we have a true independent check and balance." Salazar replied then that the announcement he was planning to make today would address her concerns.

Although the revenue-collecting agency will be moved to an entirely different part of Interior -- likely a move designed to allay Boxer's and other lawmakers' concerns -- it is still unclear whether the money collected from oil and natural gas development will continue to fund the other two bureaus. MMS generates $13 billion a year from oil and natural gas development royalties.

"How exactly those revenue streams will be matched up and the number of people who will go into each of these bureaus -- that is why we're taking the 30 days to get this right," Salazar said.

Immediately following the announcement, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said in a statement that "the Secretary has proposed a bold initiative to shake up a badly troubled agency by separating its three basic missions. While I commend him, the devil is in the details and that is part of what we will be examining next week when Secretary Salazar appears before my committee."

Rahall announced Tuesday his committee will hold a series of seven hearings to investigate the Deepwater incident and U.S. offshore oil and gas policy in general. The first two hearings will be next Wednesday and Thursday.

Darren Goode contributed to this report.

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