Administration officials said on Tuesday that the U. S. Interior Department unit tasked with overseeing offshore drilling will be split into two entities.

The Christian Science Monitor has reported that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday a proposal to split the Minerals Management Service, separating its policing and royalty-collection duties.

A conflict of interest existed because the same agency that collects an annual $13 billion in royalties also was responsible for inspecting rigs, enforcing safety rules and probing charges of wrongdoing, critics have said.

Duane Gill, an oil spill disaster expert at Oklahoma State University, told the Monitor, "I think what is driving a lot of moves toward tighter regulations is our trust has been violated, and when trust is breached or lost, it's hard to get it back."

It has been reported that the announcement was made as several hearings were being conducted into what caused a Deepwater Horizon oil rig to explode April 20 and eventually sink, leaking hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico and menacing the environment and economies along the Gulf Coast. Eleven workers died.

While BP bears the brunt of the blame for the latest spill, MMS has been criticized for allegedly failing to react to studies indicating problems with blow-out preventers, refusing to mandate back-up systems and downplaying the extent of other accidents in the gulf.

The Monitor further said that while the Obama administration stopped new exploratory drilling in the gulf, MMS approved 26 environmental review exemptions for proposed drilling sites since the accident. (With Inputs from Agencies)