It’s time to make offshore drilling safer

Six years ago, on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion killed 11 workers and set off an underwater spill that would ultimately spew roughly 210 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean before finally being stopped 87 days later. The government has not done enough in the subsequent years to ensure this will not happen again. New rules are being proposed, however, and should be passed as soon as possible.

{mosads}This disaster had wide-ranging impacts on the marine ecosystem, human health and the economy. For instance, many dolphins were killed and many of those that lived were unable to reproduce. Others suffered from lung damage. About 800,000 birds died. Harvests of oysters and fish plummeted. Workers involved in spill cleanup were exposed to chemicals that damaged their lungs. These workers also suffered from increased depression and anxiety. The Gulf’s fishing communities were devastated, with the spill’s impact on commercial and recreational fisheries estimated to cause a loss of $8.7 billion and 22,000 jobs over a seven-year period. The tourism economy also suffered.

In the years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Obama administration has taken some important steps to protect oceans and coastal communities from oil spills. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) — the agency in charge of regulating offshore energy development — was reorganized into three separate bureaus. One of them, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), was assigned to promote safety and protect the environment. In October 2010, BSEE issued the Drilling Safety Rule, setting in place stronger safety standards for the design of offshore (oil and gas) wells.

While the administration just last month heeded the voices of small businesses, fishermen and more than 100 coastal communities by removing the Atlantic Ocean from the draft plan for offshore oil and gas leasing for the next several years, there is still important work to be done.

Since the spill, Congress has not passed a single new law that would reduce the risk of another disastrous spill. In the past decade or more, the oil and gas industry has moved to deeper waters and harder-to-access frontier areas in which operations are even more dangerous and safety measures have simply not kept pace. So it should not be surprising that there has been no significant decline in losses of well control or other incidents, including spills on the Outer Continental Shelf, since the disaster in 2010. Despite industry claims to the contrary, offshore drilling remains about as dirty and dangerous as it was before the Deepwater Horizon began spewing oil into the Gulf.

The tragedy exposed several shortcomings in spill prevention and well control practices from which we should be learning. For instance, the equipment designed to seal the well in the event of a blowout malfunctioned. Current rules do not improve the design or construction of this equipment, nor do they require the industry to implement adequate inspection and maintenance. The same flawed blowout preventer that failed the Deepwater Horizon now sits at the bottom of the ocean below many offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf. Whether or not they will function in the event of a blowout is anyone’s guess. But offshore drilling is too risky and our oceans too important for this to be left to guesswork.

In April 2015, the BSEE proposed a new rule that would improve current inspection and safety measures by calling for more stringent third-party inspections and requiring the use of more advanced blowout prevention equipment. While there are shortcomings to this rule, it would serve as a good first step and should be finalized immediately.

Preferably, the final rule would not give the industry long grace periods (up to seven years in the current proposal) to install crucial safety requirements. These grace periods are much too long and would leave coastal waters vulnerable to another uncontainable spill. The industry already has had almost six years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster to prepare for stronger safety requirements. And the rule should ensure adequate redundancy for blowout preventers so we don’t have a repeat of BP’s disastrous performance.

As written, the rule is a valuable step forward and should be finalized and implemented with all possible speed. Of course, in the long run, the United States must move away from offshore drilling toward clean, cost-effective and renewable energy sources like offshore wind. Until we complete that shift, the drilling that does take place should be pursued in the safest way possible — and that is simply not happening now. With so much at stake in offshore drilling, Americans who rely on the oceans and coasts for their livelihoods deserve nothing less than the highest standards of safety and accountability.

Savitz is vice president for U.S. oceans at Oceana.