New U.S. Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling Rules Seen Imminent

By Amy Harder And Russell Gold 

WASHINGTON--The Obama administration is expected to propose in the coming days an offshore oil and natural gas drilling regulation aimed at preventing the kind of explosion that erupted five years ago on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 people and causing the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The Interior Department draft rule, which has long been expected by the industry, would impose tougher standards on that blowout preventers, which are designed to seal off oil wells in emergencies. This equipment failed in the April 2010 disaster, which helped lead to the explosion on the BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

An Interior Department spokeswoman on Saturday wouldn't say when the administration would issue the rule. But oil-industry officials say it could come imminently.

The spokeswoman said the department has issued two major regulations on drilling safety since 2010, including tougher requirements on well casings and cementing practices of wells. She stressed the latest rule would be a continuation of the administration's policy response to the spill.

Environmentalists have pushed for Congress to pass legislation in response to the oil spill, hoping lawmakers would embed tougher standards into law, making them more difficult to undo. In the years since the oil spill, however, legislative efforts have broken down over a number of issues, particularly the degree to which oil companies should be held liable for damage from such spills.

the New York Times first reported the regulation's imminent announcement on Saturday.

The new federal rules are focused on the blowout preventer, a several-story tall set of valves that typically sit on the ocean floor and are designed to sever the well and shut it down in case of an emergency. In 2010, the blowout preventer failed to work as expected, leaving a gushing well on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2011, engineers working for federal investigators probing the Deepwater catastrophe, said the emergency shut-off valves partially closed. However these valves came within 1.4 inches of sealing the well--but remained open, allowing crude oil to escape.

Later, a different federal investigation by the Chemical Safety Board concluded the pipe running from the floating drilling platform to the subsea oil well buckled, making it impossible for the blowout preventer to cut it and seal off the well. Last year, a member of the investigation said pipe buckling could render even the best maintained blowout preventers unable to shut down a well in an emergency.

The failure of the blowout preventer has been one focus of investigators, but the investigations into Deepwater Horizon incident found many systemic problems, from poorly designed blowout preventers to poor choices by workers aboard the drilling rig and government oversight that was too close to the offshore drilling industry.

Write to Amy Harder at [e-mail] and Russell Gold at [e-mail]

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