NEW ORLEANS - The Biden administration finalized tighter rules this week for complex devices meant to prevent catastrophic blowouts on offshore oil and gas drilling rigs, reversing some Trump policies and returning to a more stringent regulatory stance adopted after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Failure of blowout preventer equipment was a major cause of the April 2010 disaster that killed 11 workers and resulted in an estimated 130M gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for over 87 days.
Tougher offshore safety rules had been adopted in 2016 but were revised in 2019 under Trump. The oil industry welcomed that move, but there is an ongoing lawsuit filed by environmental organizations.
The new rules from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement address conditions and well pressures under which the automatic well control devices operate.
It’s a revision but not a complete reversal of the Trump-era changes. BSEE is maintaining an expansion of the interval between required blowout preventer inspections from 14 to 21 days.
An official with the American Petroleum Institute criticized the latest regulatory changes. (The AP 08/22/23) US Tightens Some Offshore Oil Rig Safety Rules - Biz New Orleans
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