As the federal government works to expand offshore drilling, they are simultaneously rolling back safety standards put in place to prevent disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthew Brown, from the Associated Press, recently published an article analyzing these rollbacks.
Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration called together a commission to study the causes of this disaster and produce a report on their findings. From the commission’s findings, regulations were created to prevent future catastrophic oil spills. To date, numerous important safety measures have been, or are in the process of being, rolled back including the Production Safety Systems Rule and the Well Control Rule. The Production Safety Systems Rule revision was finalized last year and no longer requires independent third party inspection of certain safety and pollution prevention equipment on offshore oil rigs. The Well Control Rule revisions are currently underway and propose “more flexibility in how companies meet safety and equipment standards.”
The Trump administration argues that these regulations are unnecessary and the revisions to these regulations will save industry more than a billion dollars. Nonetheless, another oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could threaten Florida’s clean coast economy which supports 609,899 jobs and generates $37.4 billion in GDP. This begs the question: why would we move in the direction of loosening our regulations and putting Florida’s coastal economies at risk?
To read the full article and learn more about rollbacks in the energy sector, visit: https://www.apnews.com/faca868339eb413f9a446ccb990dba05