Interior readies next round of drilling-safety rules

The Interior Department is moving ahead with plans to update toughened offshore drilling safety standards that were first issued on an “emergency” basis months after the 2010 BP oil spill.

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews federal agency rules, received final standards from Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) on Friday.

Interior is remaining mum, for now, on what changes could be in store now that the "emergency" measure has undergone formal notice and comment.

The beefed-up rules first issued in late September of 2010 include new standards for well designs, require third-party verification that subsea “blowout preventers” can close off drill-pipes and many other measures.

Interior is also crafting separate rules to “usher in a new generation of blowout preventers,” according to a recent op-ed from BSEE Director James Watson.

The supposedly failsafe device failed to contain BP’s runaway Macondo well during the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“We have already improved the testing and certification requirements for blowout preventers over the last two years. Now, with the last of the investigation reports completed, we will be proposing new rules for how blowout preventers are designed, how they must perform and how they must be maintained over their lifespans. With the help of leading technical experts and scientists, I believe we can accelerate the new rules and speed the deployment of these critical safety technologies,” he wrote in The Houston Chronicle on the two-year anniversary of the disaster.

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