The oil and gas industry came out in force Thursday with a message of “zero accidents and zero spills” ahead of the five-year anniversary of the world’s worst offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted in several deaths.
“Our goal is zero accidents and zero spills,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard said repeatedly during a call Thursday with reporters on the new safety record the industry has experienced since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in April 2010.
“Our daily commitment is one of constant improvement until that goal becomes reality. The millions of men and women who work in our industry – and all Americans whose lives are powered by oil and natural gas – deserve no less,” he said.
The second message Gerard and other industry executives attempted to convey is the need for a tempered approach toward new regulation. He noted that the offshore industry is safer than ever through its own efforts to improve the “ethic of our industry” of “safety and responsibility.”
His trade association has approved more than 100 safety standards, including new industry standards for a device called a “blowout preventer,” which became the focus of the government’s investigations into the disaster. The device is a giant electro-mechanical valve that is meant to shut off the flow of oil or gas from the well-head to the drilling platform on the surface.
The Department of Interior is expected to release new safety regulations for blowout preventers this spring. The principal operator of the offshore well, oil giant BP, was found not to have done the routine maintenance required for keeping the device working. The new regulations are likely to ensure that the devices have multiple fail-safe measures with a rigorous maintenance requirement.
Gerard said he hopes the government will take into consideration the work the industry has done to improve safety in forming its regulations. He said he doesn’t want a disconnected relationship with the regulator, and wishes to avoid “over regulation” or duplicative rules.
“We welcome enabling regulation” that allows the industry to continue to operate, said Stephen Colville, CEO of the International Association of Drilling Companies.
In the incident, the preventer device failed after an explosion from the release of natural gas ripped through the drilling line, resulting in a fire and the deaths of nearly a dozen rig workers.
Gerard said a safety office that was created by the American Petroleum Institute in the years since the spill released a new report showing “not a single loss of life” in 4,200 work hours – underscoring the industry’s goal of “zero incidents and zero spills.”
The comments, however, underscore the fact that not all parts of the industry have gotten the message of increased safety vigilance. In an incident this month in the Gulf of Mexico involving a rig operated by Mexico’s national oil company Pemex, workers jumped from the rig after an explosion killed four. Mexico’s president vowed to investigate the incident.
Environmentalists, however, dispute the improvements and are clamoring for increased regulation of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in light of the five-year anniversary.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, in its magazine “onEarth,” said that most of the recommendations made by an expert panel after the disaster have yet to be implemented or have been halted altogether. The article researches each recommendation and provides its current status.
“Manufacturers are now designing improved blowout preventers, and there are rumors that the long-awaited blowout preventer regulations will arrive this spring. But, as of now, it’s five years and counting without new rules,” according to the council’s article.
The council’s website is also featuring an entire page of investigative articles by onEarth published daily in the run up to the April 20 anniversary of the explosion. The articles examine every aspect of environmental damage that the region is still experiencing five years after the disaster. Some of the areas of concern include the harm experienced by the fishing industry, and fish and shrimp mutations that have become a common occurrence due to the large quantity of oil spilled into the Gulf along with the chemical dispersants used to fight it.
