The Biden administration has tightened offshore oil drilling safety regulations, including rules regarding the use of “blowout preventer” devices on offshore oil and gas drilling rigs.
The new rules from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement address conditions and well pressures under which the automatic well control devices operate. They require that remotely operated underwater vehicles be capable of opening and closing key components of blowout preventers. They also include mandates and time limits for investigating failures and providing data on blowouts to regulators.
It's a revision but not a complete reversal of the Trump-era changes. For instance, BSEE is maintaining an expansion of the interval between required blowout preventer inspections from 14 to 21 days. Miyoko Sakashita, of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration revisions, said the new rules would likely resolve the lawsuit, which has been delayed several times since President Joe Biden took office.
“Importantly, the rule requires that those testing and reporting on blowout preventers be certified and meet federal standards. It also requires that blow-out preventer failure reports be sent to BSEE,” Sakashita said in an email exchange.“This new rule at least puts an end to industry self-policing, but that’s too low of a bar,” Sakashita said."We can all see from this summer’s heat waves, wildfires, and severe storms that we’re in a climate crisis.
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