Despite finding 200 violations in Gulf drilling operations over the past five years, MMS collected only 16 fines.

BP and the other companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster face a host of potential fines under various environmental and safety laws, but a recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that few fines are ever actually collected after drilling accidents.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) — the troubled federal agency which is supposed to regulate the oil and gas industry — collected only 16 fines out of the 400 investigations it conducted into Gulf of Mexico drilling incidents i...