The Obama administration will take a major step Thursday in issuing strict new regulations for the oil and gas industry.
The landmark rules represent the administration’s response to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed nearly a dozen oil workers and was the biggest spill in the industry’s history.
The final regulations come less than a week before the April 20 anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig spill.
The Interior Department said the rule’s release will be a “significant milestone in ensuring that oil and gas operations on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf are conducted safely and responsibly.”
But the oil industry isn’t thrilled about the rules, which it believes could set a harmful precedent. The American Petroleum Institute reiterated its concerns to the administration Wednesday, saying not only are the rules not necessary, but they could cause even greater safety hazards.
“The Well Control Rule will affect offshore energy projects for years to come,” Erik Milito, the group’s upstream group director told reporters previewing the rule’s release. “If left unchanged from the [original] proposal, the flaws in the rule could lead to increased risks and decreased safety in offshore operations.”
In the wake of the BP oil spill, Milito said, the industry did not wait for the administration to develop new safety rules for offshore drilling. “Regulators and the industry working together have made great strides to enhance the safety of offshore operations in recent years,” he said. “Accessing offshore oil and natural gas resources is safer now than ever before.”
Many of the improvements were done through the industry’s development of 100 new safety and technology standards that the offshore industry has agreed to abide by, the oil group says.
“Immediately following the [BP] incident … the industry launched a comprehensive review of offshore safety measures and practices,” he said. “We identified areas for improvement to strengthen accident prevention, intervention and response capabilities, and we have relentlessly pursued that work.”
The administration’s regulations are “narrow, duplicative requirements,” which “if left in, could stifle innovation and delay implementation of new technologies that can improve safety and operations,” he said, making the industry less, not more, safe.
