A new federal rule designed to reduce the possibility of another Deepwater Horizon-like offshore drilling accident off the Gulf Coast has undergone some “adjustments” in response to intense industry criticism, a top U.S. energy official told a House subcommittee Wednesday.
As Fuelfix.com reports, Brian Salerno, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said changes to the new offshore drilling standards had merely codified what was standard practice at his agency—that inspectors did not rigidly follow the letter of the law but worked with operators on offshore drilling rigs to find safe and reasonable solutions.
“There’s been a lot of alarmist language associated with this,” Salerno said, following a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, whose membership includes Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves. “To believe it you would have to ignore the way this agency has historically operated.”
Salerno declined to detail specific changes, citing the fact that what is known as the well control rule is still under review at the Office of Management and Budget.
But operators have fixated on a provision within the rule that would fix the pressure at which wells operate during drilling, in an effort to prevent the sort of high-pressure gas blow back that caused BP to lose control of the Deepwater Horizon well in 2010.
Critics, citing a recent report from the research firm Wood Mackenzie, have denounced the rule as overly prescriptive and likely to cause a severe pullback in oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Graves expressed concern about whether the agency has the expertise to write such rules. “Deepwater Horizon was caused by gross negligence,” he said. “It wasn’t because the rules were flawed.”
But Salerno questioned that analysis, stating the rule had been written in response to hundreds of recommendations from various government committees and task forces that had studied the 2010 accident.
As for Graves’ allegations that industry hadn’t been involved in the process, Salerno said the agency “met with them 60 times during the development of this rule.”
Graves went on to demand the well-control rule be put back out for public comment, to give companies a chance to review the “adjustments” in language Salerno described.
Following the hearing, Salerno said he thought the agency had sufficient testimony and was ready to move forward.
