The Trump Administration will soon gut vital regulations intended to prevent deadly offshore accidents and explosions, after promoting those very rules when it moved to significantly expand drilling activity in the nation’s coastal waters.
Trump Administration Targeted Offshore Safety Regulations for Repeal
In January, President Trump’s Interior Department formally released a proposal to allow offshore drilling in 90% of United State’s coastal waters. Among other things, the document bragged of “substantial reforms” that would “improve safety and mitigate the environmental impacts.”
Those changes, the document continued, are “designed to reduce the risk of another loss of well control [as happened in 2010] in our oceans, and enhance our collective ability to respond to such incidents.”
According to the Huffington Post, that wording referenced the Well Control Rule and the Production Safety Systems Rule, two offshore regulations finalized by the Obama Administration in 2016. Both were intended to prevent a repeat of the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 offshore workers in April 2010.
The reference was surprising, as the Interior Department had already taken steps to gut the Production Safety System Rule.
The Trump Administration added the Well Control Rule to its target list in May.
Revised Offshore Regulations Protect Oil Companies at Expense of Worker Safety
The Trump Administration claims that reducing offshore drilling regulations will help the United States achieve energy dominance. It’s difficult, however, to see this action as anything other than an industry gift.
In fact, it’s estimated that the revised Production Safety System Rule will save offshore drillers $288 million over 10 years. Industry savings from the weakened Well Control Rule could reach $1 billion.
What’s more, many of the rule changes were actually requested by offshore drillers or their lobbyists.
Trump’s Weakened Offshore Drilling Rules Take Effect Next Month
In August, a consortium of 10 state attorneys general argued that the Interior Department’s simultaneous efforts to expand offshore drilling and reduce regulations was “analogous to taping over the mirrors and unbuckling one’s seat belt just before getting on the highway.”
Unfortunately, a growing chorus of similar criticism has done nothing to dissuade the Trump Administration from its current course.
In fact, the Interior Department’s watered-down offshore drilling regulations will take effect on December 27th.
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