What caught Scott A. Angelle’s attention most, soon after he became US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement director earlier this year, was when the chief executive of a Lafayette, La., independent producer, with all of its assets in the Gulf of Mexico, said that what he considered the company’s greatest risk was something he could not report to BSEE.
“Either he was overemphasizing it, or BSEE didn’t recognize it,” Angelle said during a Sept. 28 interview at the agency’s Washington headquarters. “That’s a problem, because once you get past the word ‘Bureau,’ safety is our first name. The [Safety and Environmental Management Systems] model is critical. We need to make sure that people working out there have this culture, and we inspect around it.”
When he addressed the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association’s Fall Meeting the previous week in Lafayette, BSEE’s director said that he plans to address regulatory reform, integration of a risk-based protocol into inspections, and reviews of permitting processes to make them more efficient.
He told OGJ that he would like to remove burdensome requirements that do not improve safety and plans to revisit the well control, production safety, and Arctic rules while “looking at other cats and dogs.”
Angelle said he was going through comments gathered at a Sept. 20 public forum in Houston on the well control rule to see what has been learned since it was imposed and if any of it needs to be reversed.
Sending exceptions signal
When he looked more closely at the oil and gas production control rule, more commonly known as Subpart H, he said it struck him as odd because it immediately signaled regional offices that there could be exceptions. “I think granting exceptions immediately said something was wrong. We need to clean this up,” Angelle said.
He said the Arctic rule originated in Shell Offshore Co.’s voluntary containment agreements when it drilled a test well in the Chukchi Sea in 2015 from a mobile offshore drilling unit. “There’s nothing for non-MODU drilling,” Angelle noted. He was scheduled to visit Alaska the following week to meet with state officials, Alaska Natives, and other stakeholders. “You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t lead where you don’t go. So I’m going there,” he said.
Angelle said that in building an effective risk-based inspection program, it makes sense to look at higher risks first. “If BSEE’s giving you noise, you have to find a way to address it. If we make noise about things that don’t matter, people will take their eyes off the ball. We’re going to focus on finding and handling actual risks, not creating a check list,” he told OGJ.
He said that his plans to review BSEE’s permitting processes will not cut out steps, but added that offshore producers eventually decide where to put their capital and may start looking elsewhere. National Ocean Industries Association Pres. Randall B. Luthi made the same point a day earlier during the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ 2017 North American Energy Forum (OGJ Online, Sept. 27, 2017).
Ready to share ideas
Referring to a Mexican government official’s statement at that event that the country would like to see similar offshore oil and gas regulations on both sides of boundary in the GOM, Angelle said: “We’re happy to share our regulatory thoughts since we all want a healthy gulf. But they’re also doing all they can to attract capital. If you’re in line for things that can be accomplished more quickly elsewhere, you may be inclined to start looking there.”
A BSEE team is looking at the agency’s permitting processes and expects to hold a workshop soon on the US Gulf Coast, according to Angelle. “For folks gasping for oxygen in this tough energy business climate, weeks and months of waiting for a decision aren’t acceptable,” he maintained.
He said he was proud of his work as a Louisiana state official. “When I became Secretary of Natural Resources in 2004, rig counts weren’t going up in our state but were nationally and in Texas and Oklahoma. Without taking any risks, we made changes slowly and carefully to change that,” Angelle said.
BSEE may need to establish goals to reduce permit application processing times, he suggested. “They should not penalize employees but reflect what changes are needed to get the work done sooner: more personnel, more hours, more resources, whatever is necessary,” Angelle said.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].