The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) decided to withdraw several offshore safety rules that were enacted under the Obama administration-era Well Control Rule. According to data provided by BSEE the department has been issuing hundreds of waivers for a number of these rules, prior to their repeal.
Specifically, the BSEE waivers relieved operators from the obligation of being fully compliant with the regulations about inspecting blowout preventers and testing well casings.
The two areas were of a big concern for the regulators due to the Deepwater Horizon accident, which resulted to the largest spill in history.
Concerning the accident, BP’s total liability for the spill exceeded $65 billion.
Consequently, in order to avoid a recurrence, the Well Control Rule implemented mandatory third-party inspections for BOPs and required operators to provide real time well status data to federal regulators, among other changes.
Despite the strict regulations, operators had the chance to apply to BSEE for waivers to reduce the burden of these compliance requirements, and about 1,700 exemptions were granted between August 2016 and March 2018.
A number of companies were allowed to use alternative standards to comply with the Well Control Rule’s blowout preventer testing requirements. A number of others allowed non-standard compliance with well casing testing and well cementing requirements.
However, some of the waivers could possibly be a permanent policy.
In April 2018, BSEE proposed changes to the Well Control Rule that include removing ‘prescriptive requirements’ for real-time monitoring of offshore drilling facilities and independent third-party certifications of blowout preventers.
Concluding, Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director at the Centre of Biological Diversity commented on BSEE’s proposed alters:
Workers and wildlife will pay a terrible price if these rollbacks are finalized. The next offshore oil disaster is inevitable, especially if the Trump administration keeps ignoring Deepwater Horizon’s lessons.
