In line with overall efforts to boost the national energy sector, US Trump administration eased safety rules on offshore oil and gas production put in place on the aftermath of the deadly 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Namely, the US Department of the Interior revised the 2016 well control rule, also known as the oil and gas production safety system rule, which the Obama administration enacted after the disaster that killed 11 people, caused the worst environmental disaster in US history and costed BP about $65 billion.
According to Reuters, the Interior Department noted in the rule that “certain provisions in that (2016) rulemaking created potentially unduly burdensome requirements for oil and natural gas production operators on the Outer Continental Shelf, without meaningfully increasing safety of the workers or protection of the environment.”
As such, the final rule eliminates or changes some safety standards for when a well is producing oil or gas, such as requiring that independent third parties certify devices, Reuters reported. Other changes involve when operators have to notify the government about beginning oil and gas production and what they have to report about equipment failures.
The move was welcomed by the industry but decried by environmentalists so far.
