A new report by the environmental nonprofit Oceana contends that offshore drilling remains dirty and dangerous more than nine years after the April 20, 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the aftermath of that offshore incident, which claimed 11 lives and caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history, Oceana contends that President Trump is working to weaken key safety and environmental protections currently in place, while proposing to expand offshore drilling.
The report found that the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement relies heavily on industry-written safety standards to regulate offshore drilling and does not provide adequate oversight or enforcement, and that BSEE regularly grants exemptions to offshore drilling safety requirements.
Oceana’s recommendations included one that Congress substantially raise financial penalties for safety violations to deter dangerous, non-compliant behavior and ensure that risk-tasking is no longer profitable. Oceana also recommended that Congress require accurate oil spill reporting, establish industry-specific penalties for under-reporting, increase federal resources and research new clean-up technologies.
The report also concluded that BSEE’s current inspection and enforcement actions do not result in comprehensive oversight of offshore drilling activities. As of 2018, the BSEE employed some 120 inspectors to conduct over 20,000 inspections annually.
Oceana also said civil penalties for violating offshore operating requirements are grossly inadequate and fail to deter corner-cutting. Those penalties are capped at $44,675 per day per violation, while operating costs for offshore drilling facilities can be approximately $1 million per day, the report said.
The report also noted that oil spills cannot be cleaned up effectively, with methods that have largely remained unchanged since the late 1980s. Cleanup costs alone amounted to over $14 billion in the years directly following the BP disaster, the report said.
Read the full report at http://www.oceana.org/dirtydrilling.
