WASHINGTON — Just past the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Trump on Friday directed the Interior Department to “reconsider” several safety regulations on offshore drilling implemented after one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history.
Friday’s executive order was aimed at rolling back the Obama administration’s attempts to ban oil
drilling off the southeastern Atlantic and Alaskan coasts. It would
erase or narrow the boundaries of some federally-protected marine
sanctuaries, opening them up to commercial fishing and oil drilling.
But
Mr. Trump also took aim at regulations on oil-rig safety. In the final
years of the Obama administration, the Interior Department implemented
several new rules aimed at improving the safety of specific pieces of
offshore drilling equipment that had failed during the 2010 oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico, and were found to have been responsible for the
deadly BP oil rig explosion that caused that spill.
The
explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11, set off a weeks-long
crisis for the Obama administration and spilled 4.9 million barrels of
oil into the sea.
Among
other directives, the order instructs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to
review an Obama administration plan that delineated where offshore
drilling could and could not take place between 2017 to 2022. The plan
put the entire southeast Atlantic coast and large portions of the Arctic
Ocean off limits to drilling.
On
the campaign trail, Mr. Trump repeatedly vowed to open up vast swaths
of American lands and waters to oil and gas drilling, which he has
touted as a major job creator. Mr. Zinke said that the review process
did not guarantee that all those areas would be opened up to drilling,
but noted that they would come under review.
“There’s
no set goal. But if there’s areas that are acceptable, that have
resources, and local communities are for it and states are for it we
could include it in next five-year plan,” Mr. Zinke said in a conference
call with reporters.
The
order also appears designed to roll back a permanent ban placed by
President Barack Obama on offshore drilling off some portions of the
Atlantic and Alaskan coasts, but that move is expected to be met with
immediate legal challenges.
Friday’s
order will also direct Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary — who has
jurisdiction over marine sanctuaries — to conduct a review of all such
sanctuaries created over the past 10 years, and not to create any new
sanctuaries during that review period.
The
most likely targets of that review will be major protected marine parks
created or enlarged by Mr. Obama. Last year, Mr. Obama created the
largest marine sanctuary on the planet, enlarging the boundaries of the
Papahanaumokuakea park near Hawaii.
Also
last year, the Obama administration unveiled a set of regulations on
offshore oil and gas drilling equipment, intended to tighten the safety
requirements on underwater drilling equipment and well-control
operations. In particular, the new rules tighten controls on blowout
preventers, the industry-standard devices that are the last line of
protection to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells.
The
2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig was caused in part by the
buckling of a section of drill pipe, prompting the malfunction of a
supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer on a BP well.
It
appears that those rules may be targeted in Mr. Trump’s new order. But
when questioned on which specific equipment regulations would be
reviewed, Mr. Zinke simply replied that the review would apply ”from bow
to stern.”
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