Houston Chronicle:
The nation's top offshore energy regulator said today that the federal government's ban on deep-water drilling could be lifted for some rigs before it expires in late November.
The suspension could be lifted earlier than Nov. 30 if issues surrounding drilling safety, spill containment and response equipment are resolved before then, said Michael Bromwich, the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
Bromwich's comments came in a letter to the national commission that is investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
On Aug. 6, that panel's executive director wrote Bromwich with questions about the bureau's implementation of new drilling safety requirements and how the agency was reviewing individual rigs covered by the ban.
Bromwich maintained that a broad-based approach to stepping up drilling safety was best, and repeated his opposition to a rig-based approach, where the moratorium could be lifted for individual operations after additional screening.
"We believe that system-wide rules designed to enhance safety in specific ways is the best means to raise safety standards throughout the industry and minimize the chances of another incident such as Deepwater Horizon," Bromwich said. "We believe that this approach -- rather than focusing on rig-by-rig inspections performed against the backdrop of shifting regulatory requirements -- is a more coherent approach to improving the level of safety in deep water."
But Bromwich also left open the possibility that certain types of rigs could be exempted from the moratorium before it expires -- a possibility that has been echoed by other administration officials.
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The so called "broad-based" approach amounts to collective punishment for operators who already have their act together and are ready to deal with contingencies. Everyone learned a lot from the BP experience and it is clear that if confronted with a similar situation it would not take months to fix it.
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