The Trump administration’s proposed changes to offshore oil-drilling rules are raising fundamental questions over whether safety regulators at the Interior Department should also be concerned with promoting oil and gas production, The Wall Street Journal reports.
President Donald Trump’s appointees have begun to take steps to ease safety rules put in place in the years after 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Oil industry groups back the proposed changes, but former industry regulators are concerned they explicitly put the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, led by Scott Angelle, in the role of promoting private business interests.
“BSEE’s mission is not to expand domestic production,” says Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor who served as BSEE’s first director. “This has been a sea change in BSEE’s direction, away from careful prudent regulation and toward being a compliant cheerleader for industry.”
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