Salazar's offshore safety board presents recommendations

Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 9 -- A board of senior US Department of the Interior officials asked by Interior Sec. Ken Salazar to propose changes in federal offshore energy safety oversight recommended stronger penalties, more inspectors with better training, and improved communication of policies and regulations.

Salazar created the board on Apr. 30, 10 days after BP PLC’s Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico and Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers. Salazar appointed Wilma A. Lewis, assistant Interior secretary for land and minerals manager, as its chairwoman, and Mary L, Kendall, DOI’s acting inspector general, and Rhea S. Suh, assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget, as its members.

“The report is what I was looking for: It is honest; it doesn’t sugarcoat challenges we know are there; it provides a blueprint for solving them; and it shows that we are on precisely the right track with our reform agenda,” he said on Sept. 8 as he released its findings. “We are absolutely committed to building a regulatory agency that has the authorities, resources, and support to provide strong and effective regulation and oversight—and we are on our way to accomplishing that goal.”

Salazar said the recommendations reinforce reforms already being carried out by Michael R. Bromwich, director of the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOE). Bromwich said the agency has already started to act on several of the recommendations and has developed a plan to implement the rest.

One of the report’s major themes is providing more support for BOE employees with more training and education, management commitment, and opportunities for professional growth and development. The agency’s responsibilities have expanded in scope and complexity to a point that BOE must increase and develop its staff to meet new challenges, it said.

Inadequate workforce
While the volume of production activity in the gulf has increased in the last several years, the workforce associated with regulating day-to-day oil and gas activities has not, it said. This is particularly true when it comes to review applications for permits to modify exploration and production plans, according to the report. “In addition, the sheer volume of requests creates a high-pressure work environment that can lead to challenges in balancing the need to conduct an adequate analysis for each modification decision or permit with the need to be responsive to requests from industry,” it said.

Operating policies should be more consistent and communicated more effectively, it recommended. “Inspections and enforcement—from personnel training to the deterrent effect of fines and civil penalties—also need attention,” it said. “In addition, BOE must be diligent to achieve the stewardship balance between development and environmental responsibilities envisioned in its statutes.”

The report said a single theme runs through each of its recommendations: BOE must pursue, and the oil and gas industry must engage in, a new culture of safety in which protecting human life and preventing environmental disasters are the highest priority.

“The purpose of a broad safety culture program is to create and maintain industry, worker, and regulator awareness of, and commitment to, measures that will achieve human safety and environmental protection, and to make sure that where industry fails, BOE will respond with strong enforcement authorities,” the report said.

The oil and gas industry also must play an active part, it continued. “Indeed, industry must make a widespread, forceful and long-term commitment to cultivating a serious approach to safety that sets the highest safety standards and consistently meets them,” the report said. “Ultimately, for a new and robust safety culture to take root, industry must not only follow rules, it must assume a meaningful leadership role.”

Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].