Exclusive: After citations against Elon Musk’s Boring Company were suddenly withdrawn, federal regulators are now investigating Nevada OSHA

The U.S. federal workplace safety regulator has opened an investigation into Nevada’s state OSHA agency weeks after Fortune reported that three citations the state agency had issued against Elon Musk’s Boring Company were suddenly withdrawn, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Nevada OSHA confirmed that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had received a complaint about the state agency and had opened a federal review into whether Nevada OSHA was at least as effective as the federal agency—a requirement for all state OSHA plans under U.S. law.

The federal inquiry comes about one month after Fortune published an investigation revealing that Nevada OSHA had issued three “willful” and serious citations to Boring Company, the tunneling venture founded by Elon Musk that is digging an underground Tesla tunnel system below Las Vegas and the broader county. The citations were handed to Boring after two firefighters were burned by chemicals in one of its tunnels during a training drill. Shortly after the citations were issued earlier...