The Trump administration released Thursday a final version of a rule relaxing Obama-era offshore oil and gas drilling safety rules established after BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon deadly spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst in U.S. history.
The original Well Control Rule, issued in 2016 by the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, set minimum standards for drilling, well design, and equipment maintenance in hopes of preventing another major oil spill.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said the new rule removes “unnecessary regulatory burdens while maintaining safety and environmental protection offshore.”
Environmental groups say the existing rule has worked effectively, and tampering with it increases the risk of another major spill.
“The well control rule was one of the most important actions we took, as a nation, in response to the BP-style disaster at sea,” said the environmental groups Earthjustice, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Wilderness Society.
Weakening the rule, the groups said in a joint statement, “will put our workers, waters and wildlife at needless risk.”
The Trump administration’s changes to the rule reflect its emphasis on lowering costs to the oil and gas industry as part of its “energy dominance agenda.”
That agenda, however, hit a setback recently when the Interior Department said it is delaying the release of a plan to massively expand the areas of federal waters open for drilling, after bipartisan pushback from coastal lawmakers.
Interior officials say their changes to the offshore safety rule reflect technical modifications sought by industry to ease their costs. The agency says the final rule keeps 80 percent of the original provisions.
The bureau’s “final revisions, which leave the original rule largely intact, further manage risks and better protect workers and the environment, making drilling safer,” said Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group that represents the offshore energy industry.
One change to the rule eliminates a requirement that the bureau must certify the third-party vendors who inspect offshore oil equipment, such as blowout preventers, for safety. It allows for less frequent testing of blowout preventers, meant to ensure the devices are functioning properly.
Interior is also relaxing mandates for real-time monitoring of offshore operations, deeming the requirements “prescriptive.”
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, which killed 11 workers, was caused by BP’s lack of maintenance of the blowout valve. The device is meant to prevent a surge in pressure from causing catastrophic explosions and spills.
