The Obama administration issued a suite of offshore drilling safety standards Thursday meant to prevent disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill.
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The administration is expected to issue the sweeping new regulations, said a person familiar with the decision, as part of efforts to reduce the number of well blowouts following the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010. “We’ve strengthened drilling and emergency response standards for oil and gas companies and we’re raising the bar through new standards for well design, production systems, blowout prevention and well control equipment”. The initial proposed well control rule was nothing short of an assault on oil and gas, threatening to shut down an industry that has made remarkable progress improving safety in the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon.
A group of more than 100 former state attorneys general is asking President Barack Obama to pardon former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman who is serving a prison sentence for bribery.
Speaking to press on Thursday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewel cited the complexity of oil drilling technology as one of the reasons why the regulations took six years to compose.
“We’re in communication with people on both sides of the aisle on a bicameral basis”, Jewell said.
Barataria Bay, Louisiana, was one of the most heavily oiled coastal areas from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the new study shows that half of the dead dolphins examined from Barataria Bay that stranded between June 2010 and November 2012 had a thin adrenal gland cortex, indicative of adrenal insufficiency. The device failed in the BP spill.
Epstein says some of the regulations will not go into effect for up to seven years as they are slowly rolled out. But the rules fail to require the use of two blind shear rams on other blowout preventers, such as on certain existing floating drilling units, or those that are now in construction. As a leading Republican conferee on the Highway Bill and the only member from the Louisiana delegation involved in the negotiations, Vitter continued to make the enactment of the RESTORE Act a top priority by insisting that the language be included in the final version of the bill.
The oil and gas lobby still criticized the rule for being too costly.
“We listened extensively to industry and other stakeholders and heard their concerns loud and clear- about drilling margins, blowout preventer inspections, accumulator capacity, and real-time monitoring”, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Janice Schneider said in a statement.
The agency issued its safety recommendations Wednesday afternoon. For companies that may need time to bring their operations into compliance, most of the requirements do not become effective until 3 months after publication of the final rule. Though prices have risen in recent weeks to more than $40 a barrel, they are a fraction of the $107.26 high reached in June 2014.
Meanwhile, API said it is reviewing the final rule and welcomed the government’s alignment with the industry’s leadership on safety.
“There’s no such thing as safe offshore drilling”, said Ms Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner for the Washington-based group.
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Ocean protection advocacy group Oceana said that since Congress did not enact legislation to improve offshore drilling safety, the new standards by the Interior Department were “a significant improvement over the status quo”.
