Spill panel eyes creation of new industry safety body

The leaders of the presidential panel investigating the BP oil spill are calling for creation of a new, industry-backed body to help ensure offshore oil-and-gas drilling safety.

William Reilly — co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling — said the Interior Department probably won't ever have enough money to oversee offshore rigs alone.

“The reality is, in terms of resources ... it is unlikely that you are going to see a significant enough uptick in support for [Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement] to allow them to have the increased number of inspectors that would seem to be required, pay them more, equip them technologically to understand cementing and centralizers and all of the rest of the expertise that industry has in spades,” Reilly told reporters Tuesday during a break in the panel’s hearing.

“I do think that there is going have to be another institution and the industry is going to have to form it and pay for it,” added Reilly, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George H. W. Bush.

Reilly said the industry must be open to “some kind of institution that defines best practices and supplements the regulators in ensuring that best practices are in fact observed,” and called it a “co-regulator.”

He said the nuclear industry, in contrast, has more robust structures in place to address safety.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham (D), the panel’s other co-chair, said he shares Reilly’s view that a new institution will be needed.

Reilly emphasized, however, that he was not speaking for the entire seven-member panel. The commission is slated to provide the White House its final report on the spill’s causes and proposed policy reforms in January.