The Interior Department is proposing reforms to its offshore well control rule covering drilling operations on the outer continental shelf in hopes of better protecting against the kind of blowout that caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.
Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement announced the proposed rule changes Monday, which would tighten operational and technical requirements on blowout preventer systems. The systems are used to seal wellbore sites to prevent the release of oil and gas.
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“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to the highest standards of worker safety and environmental protections. This proposed rulemaking will help ensure that offshore energy development utilizes the latest science and technology to keep people safe,” Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “As our nation transitions to a clean energy economy, we must commit to strengthening and modernizing offshore energy standards and oversight.”
The initial well control rule was finalized in 2016 in response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, which released 134 million gallons of oil into the ocean over a three-month period. Interior said the proposed changes would strengthen safety provisions it said were weakened in 2019 by the Trump administration.
Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents oil and gas producers and servicers, said the group would review the “highly technical” rule. He expressed that the Trump-era changes to the well control rule had “addressed technical problems and cleared up ambiguity with the original rulemaking” and boasted the industry’s environmental performance.
“Every barrel of oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico is a barrel produced under some of the highest environmental and safety standards in the world,” he said.
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Offshore accounted for roughly 1.8 million barrels of oil per day in June, according to the Energy Information Administration. All but a few thousand barrels per day came from the Gulf of Mexico, with the rest produced offshore in the Pacific.
The Interior Department has carried out one offshore oil and gas lease sale in the gulf since President Joe Biden took office, known as Lease Sale 257, which a federal judge subsequently invalidated on the grounds that the agency failed its review obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Interior then canceled in May the three remaining offshore lease sales provided for in its 2017-2022 five-year leasing program.
However, the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law on Aug. 16, directs the Interior to reinstate 257 and award bids. It also requires the agency to carry out the three sales it canceled, one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and two in the Gulf of Mexico.
