A new Interior Dept. rule largely echoes changes made in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that were later walked back under the Trump administration.
The new Conservative government is offering as many as 100 new oil and gas exploration licenses in the North Sea, as it also ends a moratorium on shale gas extraction imposed three years ago.
After years of low oil prices and reduced offshore activity, the Trump administration has given the oil industry a boost, offering proposals for a massive drilling plan and a rollback of Obama-era regulations.
Two Interior Dept. bureaus have concluded that oil and gas well-stimulation techniques, including hydraulic fracturing, off the coast of California do not pose a significant environmental risk.
The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration will help the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to analyze and reduce risks for offshore oil-and-gas operations under a memorandum of understanding signed on March 17.
The U.S. and Mexican governments on Feb. 20 agreed to jointly develop, along the countries’ maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico, oil and gas reservoirs that could contain up to 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cu ft of natural gas, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM.
