(Photo: U.S. Coast Guard)
A year after BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killed 11 workers and uncapped a gusher of 205 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of methane from the Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico, the pressure is on to return to business as usual in off-shore drilling. But Michael Bromwich, whose arm President Obama twisted until he agreed to take over the director's post at the freshly minted Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has resisted bending as far as industry would like. His clout reaches only so far, however. Certainly not to phasing out deep-water off-shore drilling altogether. After all, the missing word in the renamed agency is "development," its real mission in the eyes of industry and others.
With oil selling for well over $100 a barrel, the Middle East in turmoil and gaining independence from foreign oil sources once again the talk of Washington, the industry wants to accelerate the pace of approvals for new wells by BOEMRE. So far this year, only 10 permits have been issued, about a quarter of the pre-Gulf gusher rate. Bromwich said at a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies that he was happy to clarify new drilling rules for the industry but
…"what was destructive, corrosive and not done in good faith was the sniping from certain public officials and industry trade associations." …
"They claimed, and some continue to assert, that we had imposed a 'de facto' moratorium or created a 'permitorium' that was blocking the issuance of drilling permits," Bromwich said. "Not because the applications had failed to meet all the requirements, which was the fact, but supposedly because we had made politically motivated decisions not to issue them. That could not have been further from the truth, but it was repeated often enough that people who should have known better came to believe it."
Yep. Like the wealthy seeking tax cuts, no matter how much you do for the oil companies, no matter how much you cooperate with their demands, it's never enough. The doctrine of divine right of kings has nothing on these guys. If only you'd make all those regulations voluntary and stop actually reading those permit applications, everything would be hunky-dory. Just ask Rep. Darrell Issa, who claims that the Obama administration has assaulted communities in the Gulf with its drilling policies.
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, four bills are under study to force a permit-approval speed-up, open areas now barred from drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, revisit lease sales canceled after the spill and to dilute environmental rules regulating off-shore drilling in Alaska. And BP, which had ceased its usual $200,000 in annual contributions to U.S. political campaigns has shaken off its shyness amid its rising share price and ponied up $29,000 for politicians. In the past, BP spread the cash around to members of both parties; this time all but one of them is Republican, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.
“Much of the legislation that I have seen being bandied about, especially with the House Republicans, is almost as if the Deepwater Horizon-Macondo well incident never happened,” said [Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Bromwich's boss] last week. “If another Macondo happened and we didn’t have the ability to contain it, it would probably mean the death of energy development in the nation’s oceans.”
Despite imposing new rules about well design, developing a cooperative industry-wide system for plugging future gushers and creating a new culture in the regulatory bureaucracy to end the cozy relationship between inspectors and oil execs and their shills, chances remain good that another Macondo might not be quickly contained. For one thing, blowout preventers still can't cope with a rupture equal to the one that sank the Deepwater Horizon.
Many of the regulatory flaws identified by the President's oil spill commission have yet to be dealt with:
…William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who was one of two chairmen of the commission … said last week Bromwich was doing a creditable job, but that the agency still lacked the technical expertise needed to oversee such a specialized industry. “They changed the name, but all the people are the same,” Mr. Reilly said. “It’s embarrassing.” …
Mr. Bromwich acknowledged that accident rates for offshore drilling were several times higher in the United States than in Australia, Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom, in part because those countries imposed effective new rules after major accidents.
While regulatory regimes in those countries are far stricter and might have prevented the Macondo disaster had they been in place in the Gulf, the reach of BP and other oil companies cannot be underestimated here or abroad. The Guardian reports that oil-company lobbying has spurred the UK and some other European governments to reject stricter deep-water drilling standards being proposed by the European Union:
One proposal, which would extend the EU regulations to the overseas operations of European offshore oil firms, is the subject of a sustained attack. If this rule had been in place last year BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling would have been subject to EU safety standards. Greenpeace said it was vital that this was retained. …
Oil companies would have to prove they could pay for any damage caused, either through an obligation to buy sufficient insurance, or by paying into a fund. They would also have to submit detailed plans on dealing deal with any accident.
Mobile oil rigs, like BP's Deepwater Horizon floating platform, would also be covered, with new tough rules on the kind of equipment to be used, such as blowout preventers, the failure of which was a key factor in the BP catastrophe. At present, laws requiring a high standard of safety equipment are limited to fixed rigs.
Companies would have to record any incidents, however minor, and notify the EU, with a description of the problem and and what was done to solve it. At present, companies can conceal such incidents.
Bromwich also wants more regulations added to those imposed during the drilling moratorium that followed in the wake of the gusher. Directed at oil giants, that's the sort of talk that could make for a short job tenure.