Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee is developing recommendations on spill prevention, containment, response and cleanup
The offshore oil and gas industry can anticipate further new rules to enhance drilling safety, Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said Wednesday.
View full sizeThis oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was photographed in April 2009. Bromwich spoke with reporters in a conference call from New Orleans before two days of meetings of the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee, headed by Tom Hunter, being held at the Astor Crowne Plaza. The committee, which has met once before, is developing recommendations on spill prevention, containment, response and cleanup, and safety management systems to present to Bromwich and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, beginning this fall.
BOEMRE anticipates issuing an advance notice of new rulemaking after it releases its report later this month on its joint investigation with the Coast Guard into last year's Deepwater Horizon accident.
"We anticipate the advance notice of rulemaking will be extremely broad," Bromwich said. "It will contemplate a large body of possible improvements and enhancements to our current regulations including BOPs (blow-out preventers), which I've talked about many times, but I think that is only one example.
"One of the reasons we're giving advance notice is to make sure we capture the broad range of potential ideas for safety enhancements that may be out there, so we're looking for suggestions from within the government, we're looking for suggestions from industry, and we're certainly looking for suggestions from Tom (Hunter) and his committee and subcommittees," Bromwich said.
One suggestion Wednesday was that Bromwich temper his rhetoric. That came from Owen Kratz, president and CEO of Helix Energy Solutions Group, one of two companies that developed the well containment capacity that enabled BOEMRE earlier this year to resume permitting of deepwater drilling.
"Don't come out and say that," Kratz said of Bromwich's assertions that broad new regulatory changes were in the offing.
"Maybe that was a political sound bite, but of course you're going to always look for continual improvement, but you don't need to scare everybody by saying we're going to come and change all the rules tomorrow," said Kratz, who was in Washington participating in the National Summit on Energy Security, which brought together business executives, retired military officers and top former government officials to talk about the national security risk of the nation's dependence on oil.
"The problem is when he comes out and says something broad like that, or they write overly broad regulations, like NTL-10 (in which BOEMRE set subsea containment requirements), the actual worker bees in the BOEM don't know how to interpret that, and what they do is they implement it according to the letter," said Kratz, who said that, Bromwich's Wednesday comments notwithstanding, "things are infinitely better than they were and the BOEM working relationship with industry is a lot better than it was."
There also has been industry concern about assertions by Bromwich this spring that he is looking at extending regulations to govern contractors, such as the rig owners, and not just the operators who hold the leases. There is language in the House Interior Appropriations bill meant to keep Bromwich from attempting that without better explaining what he is up to and under what authority.
Bromwich said he had already done that with congressional staff and would be happy to do so again, just as he said he had responded to a senator who had challenged him on the matter.
That was a reference to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who in May wrote Bromwich suggesting that it "appears this expansion of regulatory authority will serve as another hurdle to expanding our domestic production by inserting even more confusion to the permitting process."
Bromwich said he had concluded that, based on the Deepwater Horizon experience, BOEMRE "should hold contractors responsible for their actions, even while continuing to hold lessees responsible," and that the agency clearly has that authority under federal law but "we have made no decisions" about when and how it might do so.
Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.857.5125.