Interior watchdog clears official over agency work involving his former oil industry employer

An agency watchdog failed to substantiate allegations that a senior Interior Department official violated ethics rules by participating in matters that impacted his former employer, according to a report that was published on Wednesday. 

The investigation covers the involvement of Matthew Giacona — the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees energy development in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf — in a 2025 opinion regarding the impact of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on protected marine species. 

Prior to his government service, Giacona was the vice president of government affairs at the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore oil and gas companies. As part of his federal ethics paperwork, according to the Interior Department inspector general, Giacona agreed “not [to] participate in particular matters involving specific parties in which NOIA is a party or represents a party” but that “did not extend to NOIA’s individual members.”  

Giacona began to work on the 2025 opinion, which NOIA was already approved to provide feedback on, when he joined the department in March 2025. He told the IG that he wasn’t aware of NOIA’s involvement and that “he did not meet with NOIA personally or in his official capacity since joining the DOI.” Investigators did not uncover any evidence to contradict that assertion. 

Even so, the IG reported that Giacona’s involvement in the 2025 opinion would not have run afoul of ethics rules because the analysis deals with oil and gas drilling in the Gulf generally as opposed to any specific action by NOIA. 

“The [2025 opinion] evaluates how oil and gas activities regulated by BOEM and [Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] may affect protected species and habitats in the Gulf of [Mexico],” investigators wrote. “[Its] provisions apply broadly to all oil and gas activities conducted in the Gulf. It does not, in and of itself, affect the legal rights of specific, identified parties.” 

The IG noted that Giacona could have broken his ethics agreement if he was involved in lawsuits, to which NOIA is a party, filed in response to the Gulf opinion, but the office did not find any evidence of such participation. 

The report also covers an April 2025 incident in which the federal government affairs manager for the oil and gas company Chevron texted Giacona on his personal device requesting a meeting regarding the 2025 opinion. Giacona replied that he couldn’t do external meetings until his ethics paperwork was cleared, referred her to another staffer and emailed screenshots of their conversation to his agency email address. 

Investigators likewise determined that this did not violate any ethics rules because Chevron was approved to consult on the opinion and that any other entity participating in the analysis had the ability to request a meeting. 

“Officials familiar with the process told us that there is no formal mechanism for Gulf [opinion] applicants to request a meeting and provide their feedback but that they can contact either the BOEM point of contact that is provided to all applicants or any BOEM staff with whom they have a professional, pre-existing relationship,” they wrote. 

President Donald Trump in August reportedly installed Dennis Kirk, a co-author of the conservative Project 2025 presidential transition initiative, as a political appointee in the Interior IG office. Kirk is also the nominee to serve as the watchdog. 

Former Interior IG Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was removed from his position in a mass firing of the watchdogs at the start of Trump’s second term, told Government Executive by email that this IG report “seems legitimate” but that Kirk’s appointment erodes credibility. 

“This seems to be consistent with how we treated similar inquiries during my tenure, so I didn't get a sense of partisan interference from this one,” he wrote. “But this is exactly the problem with having a mole like Dennis Kirk inserted into the OIG — it instantly plants a seed of doubt in everyone's minds about whether there was partisan interference.”