Tommy Beaudreau is a former chief of staff at the department who was the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The White House is naming Tommy Beaudreau, a former Obama administration official, to be deputy secretary at the Interior Department after dropping plans for a more liberal nominee who faced key Senate opposition.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated Beaudreau, a former chief of staff at the department who was the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The agency, created after the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, oversees offshore drilling and wind power.
Beaudreau grew up in Alaska and is politically close to Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a former chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who holds great sway over oil drilling, endangered species and other department issues.
Murkowski and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who now heads that committee, opposed Biden’s plan to…