"As BOEM’s new principal deputy director, former lobbyist Matt Giacona is shaping Gulf of Mexico oil policy and facilitating industry access. Ethics experts sound the alarm."
"In March of this year, the Trump administration selected Matt Giacona for a top job at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an Interior Department agency responsible for overseeing offshore oil and gas drilling and energy extraction in the Gulf of Mexico and other American waters. It was a classic case of Washington D.C.’s revolving door, in which government officials go to work as industry lobbyists and industry lobbyists, in turn, land plum government appointments. Giacona came to BOEM directly from the National Ocean Industries Association, or NOIA, a powerful offshore oil industry trade group, where he worked as a lobbyist advocating for drillers and other offshore extractive interests.
The offshore oil industry quickly took advantage of their new high-ranking contact at BOEM.
Not long after Giacona’s appointment, he got a text message from a lobbyist for Chevron, which is one of NOIA’s member organizations. The lobbyist, Carrie Domnitch, wanted a favor.
In text messages that Public Domain obtained, Domnitch asked Giacona to take a meeting with a top Chevron official to discuss a high-stakes Endangered Species Act review of federal oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. That ESA review, known as a biological opinion or BiOp, regulates leasing, drilling and other industrial activities in the Gulf to ensure they comply with federal endangered species protections. It has been the subject of controversy and litigation in recent years due to the threat that offshore oil drilling in the Gulf poses to the endangered Rice’s whale, a species whose population is estimated at fewer than 100 individuals. Chevron wanted to discuss the Gulf BiOp with Giacona before an updated version was slated to be officially released by federal agencies in May 2025."
Jimmy Tobias and Hana Beach report for Public Domain June 27, 2025.
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