A controversial U.S. Dept. of the Interior final rule tightens offshore energy drilling safety requirements, weakened by one in 2019 under the Trump administration. The action is intended to prevent environmental disasters similar to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion and spill. The rule, supported by environmental groups and opposed by oil interests, largely restores Obama administration changes following that tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons of oil.
Published Aug. 23 in the Federal Register, the rule requires blowout preventer systems that are always able to close and seal a wellbore to the well’s maximum anticipated surface pressure. Operators also must provide failure data to the Interior Dept. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and a designated third party, with failure investigations mandated to start within 90 days of such an incident.
Deepwater Horizon had a blowout preventer, but a U.S. Chemical Safety Board report on the spill found it failed and, instead of sealing a pipe, cut it.
“These improvements are necessary to ensure offshore operations, especially those related to well integrity and blowout prevention, are based on the best available, sound science,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
Not everyone agrees. In a written comment last year on the proposed rule, the American Petroleum Institute and other groups called tit “ambiguous” and claimed some changes are not economically feasible.
In another comment, a coalition of environmental advocacy groups led by the Natural Resources Defense Council said the rule “corrects” the 2019 changes, but it urged officials to add specifics and make more stringent changes.
“The importance of having strong blowout preventer and well control rules cannot be overstated,” the groups wrote.
Most of the rule, titled Oil and Gas and Sulfur Operations in the Outer Continental Shelf-Blowout Preventer Systems and Well Control Revisions, takes effect in 60 days, but a provision requiring remotely operated vehicles that can manually open and close blowout preventers won't be effective for one year.
