WASHINGTON – When the Presidential Committee on the Deepwater Horizon disaster research are meeting today’s second hearing, the panel intends to examine the regulatory lapses that paved the way for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Witnesses for the seven-member panel Elizabeth Birnbaum, formerly the nation’s top regulator drilling, the word publicly for the first time since she resigned under pressure after five weeks the 20-4 blowout at BP’s Macondo well. Two other previous drilling supervisors are scheduled to join Birnbaum fielding questions about whether the government is too lax in regulating the industry.
But the panel’s attention, instead, could be diverted to a debate on the administration of six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling, which has been challenged by oil industry leaders and Gulf Coast officials, who say that the prohibition of the region will already hard-hit economy to ruin.
Environmental activists and the Obama administration argue that the ban – until November 30 runs – is a necessary time-out, while industry and government encourage drilling safety, improving containment techniques, and ensure that sufficient available cleanup equipment in the event of a leak.
The drilling ban dominated by the Commission first round of meetings in New Orleans last month, as rig workers and offshore services industry representatives complained that the policy has roughly two dozen offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico idled.
The committee co-chairmen, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, and former Florida Governor Bob Graham, also have expressed concern about the ban and whether the moratorium would be lifted for a number of activities that rigorous new pass safety inspections.
“We are particularly interested in whether individual tack – or types of rigs – depending on the moratorium sufficiently safe to lift the moratorium on these rigs,” the Commission, the Executive Director, Richard Lazarus, said in a August 6 letter to Michael Bromwich, the head of the Office of Energy Management Offshore, regulation and enforcement.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that created the agency in June as part of a broad review of the now disbanded Mineral Management Service, the unit formerly headed by Birnbaum.
Low-risk operations
Although Bromwich against a rig-based approach to lifting the ban, he told the committee in a letter Monday that the moratorium would be partially lifted before the scheduled expiration date for certain low risk activities.
The national commission that President Barack Obama approved in May, is charged with granting the causes of the explosion at the oil rig Deepwater Horizon and suggest new regulations and other changes that may prevent a recurrence. The panel is expected to explain his findings in January.
Her work is consistent with a number of other oil spill investigations – including a joint investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard and Bromwich’s desk that’s hearings this week in Houston.
Broader issues
Until now, the National Commission for the public dealt with the broader issues of offshore drilling. For example, today’s hearing will be a 80 minute introduction to the history of the industry by Shell Exploration and Production Manager, an energy consultant and head of the World Wildlife Fund. The panel is scheduled to hear the University of Houston business professor Tyler Priest, and officials with the American Petroleum Institute.
But the Commission now has the framework for building a more focused examination of what went wrong on the rig Deepwater Horizon, spokesman Dave Cohen said. It has hired 40 researchers to investigate the disaster.
At the helm of the research team, Fred Bartlit, a trial lawyer for former President George W. Bush represented in the legal battle in Florida over the disputed election of 2000. Bartlit is also a veteran of another oil spill investigation – he was chief counsel during one year long probe of the 1988 explosion of the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea that 167 slain.
Lacks subpoena power
So far, the panel is operating without the power to subpoena documents and to compel testimony from reluctant witnesses.
Lawmakers, led by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. And Ed Markey, D-Mass., Have called for legislation in favor of a subpoena powers to the Commission, but their proposal has stalled on Capitol Hill among other disputes on energy and how to companies’ liability for oil spills to stimulate.
The panel’s findings could dictate the future of the oil and gas drilling off the nation’s shores for decades. Interior Ministry officials have also identified the Commission’s work could affect whether the department will use its deepwater drilling ban to change in the coming months to help.
Source: chron.com
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