Zinke’s offshore drilling proposal is a risky venture into deep waters
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposes to open up vast areas of America’s offshore federal waters to oil drilling, much of them in coastal waters that President Barack Obama, for good reasons, ruled off limits. At the same time, Zinke proposes to roll back safety regulations for offshore drilling rigs put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout, an extraordinary act of corporate misconduct that not only fouled the Gulf of Mexico but also eventually cost BP a tidy $61 billion in cleanup costs, federal penalties and reparations to individuals and businesses.
Is there not something wrong with that picture? Much has been made of the damage Zinke’s orders will do to Obama’s environmental legacy, already under attack throughout the Trump administration. They are also an assault on common sense. Thinking about the recklessness of expanding the possibilities for disaster while simultaneously weakening defenses against it dizzies the mind. And all in pursuit of what Zinke and President Donald Trump call “energy dominance,” a vaguely defined and, as far as crude oil is concerned, almost certainly unattainable goal.
The administration’s drilling ambitions were contained in an updated five-year leasing plan covering the years 2019-24, required by Trump in an executive order in April. The pushback has already begun. Governors all along the East Coast, including the Republicans Rick Scott of Florida and Chris Christie of New Jersey, have said no thanks, do not despoil our coasts. Ditto the Democratic governors of California, Oregon and Washington.
That pretty much leaves Alaska’s politicians, always on the hunt for new discoveries to replace North Slope reserves and refill the state treasury, as the plan’s main cheerleaders — even though the ecological risks in the Arctic’s forbidding waters are greater than anywhere else because cleaning up just a minor oil spill would be difficult, if not impossible.
The proposed rollbacks of the safety
Thinking about the recklessness of expanding the possibilities for disaster while simultaneously weakening defenses against it dizzies the mind. And all in pursuit of “energy dominance,” a vaguely defined goal.
rules governing offshore drilling are no less revealing of this administration’s fealty to the oil and gas industry. One rollback, announced Dec. 29 by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, would weaken the production-safety rule. It has a 30-day comment period.
The other proposal, still in draft form, would revise well-control rules that govern technologies such as the blowout preventer that failed in the BP spill.
The rollbacks would not amount to a wholesale reversal of the Obama rules. But they would lighten industry’s responsibilities, and in so doing suggest a return to a more permissive regulatory era. Before the BP spill, offshore drilling was regulated by the Minerals Management Service, described in a 2008 report by the inspector general at the time, Earl Devaney, as hopelessly conflicted by its competing obligations to police the industry and also to grant leases and collect royalties.
After the spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar broke the agency in two, one part to do the leasing and collect the money and BSEE to enforce safety and other rules. He named a lawyer, Michael Bromwich, to run the enforcement arm, and ever since the oil companies and trade organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Ocean Industries Association have complained about regulatory overkill. Now, having spent eight years in exile, they have found someone who will listen to their complaints.
The result: weaker rules and a more compliant BSEE, which sees itself as a partner in encouraging offshore development and production — which was plainly not the reason the bureau was created. The days of Bromwich are long gone. The man now running BSEE, Scott Angelle, is an amiable Louisiana politician and friend of the oil industry who called for an early end to the temporary drilling moratorium imposed after the gulf spill.
Bromwich sees a sea change at the Interior Department, a change that spells an “enormous rollback” of the balanced approach toward exploration the Obama administration tried to achieve. It could well end badly.