Obama administration officials today outlined their plans for new regulations designed to boost the reliability of crucial emergency equipment safeguarding offshore wells. Fundamentally, said Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, blowout preventers “need to be able to cut whatever is in their way and completely sell off the well.”  More »

Federal regulators crafting new regulations to boost the reliability and power of emergency equipment used as a last line of defense against surging oil and gas at offshore wells will get feedback from energy companies, drilling engineers and other experts on Tuesday.  More »

The White House on Tuesday pushed back against the oil and gas industry’s claims that the Obama administration is blocking domestic energy development, releasing a new analysis showing that 46 million acres of federal lands and waters leased for drilling are sitting idle.  More »

Some offshore drillers are adding spare blowout preventers so one can protect their wells while the second is down for maintenance or inspection.  More »

The Obama administration unveiled a proposed rule that would force companies to reveal the chemicals they use when drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands. But the long-anticipated regulation includes a major concession to oil and gas companies, by allowing those disclosures to happen after a well is drilled and the chemicals are pumped underground — not a month beforehand, as federal regulators had originally considered.  More »

As the OTC gets underway to record numbers here in Houston, one oft repeated phrase from industry and government is that safety should come first. James Watson, head of BSEE, also announced that the government plans to speed up its rulemaking on safety requirements by skipping the “notice of proposed rulemaking” stage and going straight [...]  More »

Federal regulators are vetting Shell’s plans to drill 10 wells in Arctic waters near Alaska ahead of planned testing of oil spill response equipment later this year. Shell still has to convince regulators that it can contain oil and gas in case of a blown out well in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.  More »

The nation’s top offshore drilling regulator today laid out an ambitious agenda for his agency, including plans to issue new mandates for emergency equipment and update decades-old regulations governing oil and gas production safety systems.  More »

For months, the Obama administration has been preparing to unveil new regulations governing hydraulic fracturing on federal lands, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the mandates are still being refined. American Indian tribes also complain they weren’t adequately consulted over the planned rule.  More »

A 10-mile oil sheen that surfaced in the central Gulf of Mexico last week was caused by crude naturally seeping from the sea floor, federal investigators said today.  More »

Naturally seeping oil from the seafloor is the likely culprit behind a 10-mile sheen discovered in the central Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, federal officials said Friday.  More »

The Obama administration on Friday established a working group to coordinate federal regulation of natural gas production, amid industry complaints that an increasing number of government agencies are overseeing the activity.  More »