Federal regulators are considering new mandates to strengthen emergency equipment known as blowout preventers, but an Obama administration official insisted that deep-water drilling shouldn’t be held up in the meantime.
“You can always improve the equipment that is being used,” said Michael Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. “But that doesn’t mean you bring activities to a standstill until you’ve enhanced those rules.”
Bromwich made his comments on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show last night, as he defended the bureau’s recent approval of nine deep-water projects that were halted after last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
At issue is whether the government should authorize more deep-water drilling, after a four-month examination of the blowout preventer used at BP’s failed Macondo well revealed that it was unable to slash off-center drill pipe, seal the well hole and trap oil underground. That report raised new questions about whether blowout preventers can be counted on as a last line of defense against surging oil and gas, particularly if it is already flowing out of a well.
Bromwich said he was confident that new safety and environmental rules for offshore drilling have already made the practice much safer than it was before the spill. Waiting for new blowout preventer standards — imposed under a federal rulemaking process that could take a year or more — wouldn’t be prudent, he said.
“There is an insufficient basis for saying ‘let’s stop things in their tracks for the one or two years that it takes to develop better blowout preventer rules,’” Bromwich said. “I think that would be a huge mistake and would be contrary to the best interests of this country.”
Bromwich likened the pursuit of better blowout preventers to the refinement of safety equipment in vehicles:
“For a long time airbags could not deal with side impacts. Did that mean we pulled all the cars off the road, pending better airbags? No. That would have been a silly way to proceed.”
Bromwich’s appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show demonstrated how he and other drilling regulators face criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.
Republicans and industry advocates have cast the Obama administration as moving slowly to restart offshore drilling after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In response, the House Natural Resources Committee is set next Wednesday to vote on three bills that would accelerate offshore drilling.
At the same time, environmentalists and some congressional Democrats say the administration is being hasty.
But Bromwich rejected the accusation that the agency was engaged in a “rash issuing of permits:”
“We issued none until the latter part of February. We were strongly criticized for dragging our heels on not issuing any permits for several months after the lifting of the deep-water moratorium, which was actually lifted in October. And the reason we didn’t was because the containment capabilities weren’t ready.”
Check out the full segment here:
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Bromwich handled himself very well with Ms. Maddow and made some very cogent points. While Rachel seemed to only focus on the BOP issue, Bromwich pointed out several times that a BOP is only a link in the chain, so to speak. Other safety measures such as inspection improvements and improved methods make a blowout less likely. After all, it wasn’t just the BOP that caused the blow out, cutting corners in the capping procedure is what caused the blow out in the first place.