New York Times
September 8, 2010
September 8, 2010, 4:37 pm
By JOHN M. BRODER
Regulators who are supposed to police offshore oil and gas drilling are spread too thinly, poorly trained and hampered by outdated technology, according to a study
http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Salazar-OCS-Safety-Board-Report-a-Blueprint-for-Next-Steps-on-Internal-Reforms-of-Offshore-Energy-Oversight.cfm
by an Interior Department review board appointed after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Outer Continental Shelf Safety Oversight Board noted in a
report http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=43677
on Wednesday that oil and gas leasing off the nation’s coastlines had nearly tripled since 1982, while the size of the regulatory staff had declined by a third. Off the West Coast, there are five inspectors for 23 offshore production platforms. In the Gulf of Mexico, there are 55 inspectors for 3,000 facilities, the report states.
The study also found that overworked inspectors came under constant pressure from operators not to cite them for violations of rules, complaining that they could lead to fines or costly work stoppages. Inspectors said that they were unable to perform unannounced inspections because of the difficulty of reaching offshore platforms and because of Coast Guard security rules.
The report recommended hiring dozens of new inspectors and giving additional training to those already on the job. It also urged a more robust system of enforcement, including greater authority to cite violations and impose fines.
“I tasked the O.C.S. Safety Board with taking a hard, thorough look top to bottom at how this department regulates and oversees offshore oil and gas operation and provide me their honest and unvarnished recommendations for reform,” said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary. “The report is what I was looking for: it is honest; it doesn’t sugarcoat challenges we know are there; it provides a blueprint for solving them; and it shows that we are on precisely the right track with our reform agenda.”
Many of the panel’s recommendations, including an overhaul of the enforcement of the Minerals Management Service (the agency now reconstituted as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement),
http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=43676
are already being put in place. Under its new leader, Michael R. Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, the agency has already issued a new conflict-of-interest policy and set up an internal investigations unit.
“To a substantial degree, we fully concur with the recommendations,” Mr. Bromwich said in a telephone briefing for reporters. “Without knowing them in advance, we’re moving to implement the bulk of them.”
Mr. Salazar and Mr. Bromwich said that the revamping of offshore regulation was proceeding independently of the moratorium on deepwater drilling that was imposed in July. That suspension is scheduled to end on Nov. 30, whether or not all of the policies and practices recommended by the safety board are in place, they said.
“They don’t all need to be met for the moratorium to be lifted,” Mr. Bromwich said. “There are a cascading series of reforms under way to raise the bar to be met by industry to make deepwater drilling ever more safe. This is simply a recognition it will take time for all of this to be in place.”
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News Release
September 8, 2010
http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/Salazar-OCS-Safety-Board-Report-a-Blueprint-for-Next-Steps-on-Internal-Reforms-of-Offshore-Energy-Oversight.cfm?renderforprint=1 &
US Dept of Interior
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Bromwich Develops Implementation Plan for Recommendations
09/08/2010
Contact: Kate Kelly, DOI (202) 208-6416
WASHINGTON Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that a team led by senior officials in the Department of the Interior, including Interior’s Inspector General, have completed a review of offshore oil and gas oversight and regulation and have delivered a set of recommendations that reinforce and expand on ongoing reforms being carried out by Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael R. Bromwich.
The report of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Safety Oversight Board, which Secretary Salazar established immediately following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, provides recommendations to strengthen permitting, inspections, enforcement and environmental stewardship. Director Bromwich announced today that BOEMRE has developed an implementation plan for the recommendations, many of which are already underway or planned.
“I tasked the OCS Safety Board with taking a hard, thorough look top to bottom – at how this department regulates and oversees offshore oil and gas operations and provide me their honest and unvarnished recommendations for reform,” said Secretary Salazar. “The report is what I was looking for: it is honest; it doesn’t sugarcoat challenges we know are there; it provides a blueprint for solving them; and it shows that we are on precisely the right track with our reform agenda. We are absolutely committed to building a regulatory agency that has the authorities, resources, and support to provide strong and effective regulation and oversight and we are on our way to accomplishing that goal.”
“The goal of our efforts is a culture of safety, in which protecting human life and preventing environmental disasters are the highest priorities, while making leasing and production safer and more sustainable,” said Assistant Secretary Wilma Lewis, who chaired the Safety Oversight Board. Mary L. Kendall, Acting Inspector General of Interior and Rhea S. Suh, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget, also served as members of the Board.
“My mandate from the President and Secretary was explicit reform the way the agency does business in managing and regulating offshore energy development on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf,” said BOEMRE Director Bromwich, who noted that the initiatives are consistent with the reform agenda he has been developing and implementing. “Many of the Board’s recommendations will be addressed through initiatives and programs that are already in process and are central to our reform agenda.”
The Safety Oversight Board’s findings and recommendations provide a framework to build upon reforms to create more accountability, efficiency and effectiveness in the Interior agencies that carry out the Department’s offshore energy management responsibilities. The recommendations address both short- and long-term efforts that complement other ongoing reports and reviews, such as the Secretary’s May 27 report to the President, the Presidential inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the U.S. Coast Guard-Interior investigation into the causes of the incident.
The recommendations range from improved consistency and communication of BOEMRE’s operational policies to technology improvements and day-to-day management in the field. Strengthening inspections and enforcement from personnel training to the deterrent effect of fines and civil penalties is a major focus of the recommendations.
BOEMRE’s implementation plan outlines the initiatives and programs that the Bureau is undertaking which address the report’s recommendations, including: reorganizing MMS to address real and perceived conflicts between resource management, safety and environmental oversight and enforcement, and revenue collection responsibilities; seeking additional resources in the form of funding, personnel, equipment and information systems; ethics reforms that include the establishment of an Investigations and Review Unit and a new recusal policy to address potential conflicts of interests within BOEMRE and industry; and Inter-Agency coordination with federal agencies related to oil spill response and the mitigation of environmental effects of offshore energy development.
The OCS Safety Oversight Board Report is online at http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=43677
The BOEM Implementation Plan is online at http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=43676 (signed) and http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=43879 (text-PDF)
Special thanks to Richard Charter