New Blog: BSEE’s Approach to Modifying the “Well Control Rule”
WASHINGTON—In a new blog posted today, Resources for the Future Senior Fellow Alan Krupnick and Research Assistant Isabel Echarte address the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s recent approach in amending the 2016 blowout preventer and well control rule. That rule had been enacted in response to the Deepwater Horizon well blowout in 2010. The RFF authors begin:
Measured Modification to BSEE’s Well Control Rule
On May 11, 2018, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued a proposed rule to relax 59 of 342 elements of its 2016 blowout preventer (BOP) and well control rule, enacted in response to the Deepwater Horizon well blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The proposed changes seek to reduce what the administration considers redundant requirements for testing and paperwork submissions as well as making some provisions more flexible and clarifying the text of others. While we will not assess the merits of those individual adjustments given the high degree of expertise in petroleum engineering needed, we can discuss BSEE’s approach in amending the regulation using the cost-benefit analyses of the final 2016 well control rule and the proposed changes. In our view, BSEE took a measured and restrained approach in its aim to reduce the well control rule’s compliance costs as the agency chose not to pursue a number of more extreme changes.
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