Feds must boost oversight of offshore drilling, spill panel says

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. needs stronger government regulation and self-policing by industry to improve the safety of offshore oil and gas drilling, the presidential commission that investigated the Gulf disaster reported in its final recommendations today.

Co-chairs Bob Graham and William Reilly warned that the recommendations in their findings would "come with costs" as well as take time to implement. "But inaction, as we are deeply aware, runs the risk of real costs, too," including to lives, the regional economy of oil states, and the environment.
The report concludes the explosive loss of BP's well could have been prevented and that mistakes that lead to it reveal systematic failures in risk management that "place in doubt the safety of the entire industry."
Drilling will continue, but can be done in ways that will reduce future risks, it says.
The disaster "did not have to happen," Graham said. It was both "foreseeable and preventable." It's "inherently risky" but it's the government's responsibility to make sure offshore drilling is done safely and effectively, he said.
More scientific research is also needed, the report said. It found that scientific understanding of the environmental conditions in the Gulf of Mexico as well as areas proposed for more drilling, including the Arctic, were inadequate.
The recommendations include:
-- Congress should create a safety agency in the Department of Interior to oversee offshore drilling. Industry, rather than the taxpayers, should pay for the regulation.
-- At the same time, however, the president should seek "significantly increased funding" for the agencies that oversee oil spill responses, including the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
-- The oil and gas industry should establish a safety institute similar to those established by other high-risk industries such as the nuclear power and chemical industries. Its purpose would be to enforce safety standards.
-- Oil and gas companies should be required to show they have evaluated all the risks associated with each specific well.
-- Government environmental review should be led by a scientist.
The American Petroleum Institute, the lobby group for the industry, said on Tuesday that it already has started to create an industry safety program for deepwater drilling. API approved of parts of the report, including its call for more federal spending on drilling oversight. The industry group criticized the report because it "casts doubt on an entire industry based on its study of a single incident."
Marilyn Heiman, director of the U.S. Arctic Program at the Pew Environment Group, said Congress and the president should heed the commission's recommendations.
"The rules governing how we drill for oil are dangerously outdated and oversight has been lax," she said. "We have to have the best standards in the world."


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