Industry objects to stricter offshore drilling rules

NEW ORLEANS – The Obama administration issued new rules Thursday to make offshore oil and natural gas drilling equipment safer and to reduce risks in digging wells, but the oil industry and its supporters in Congress say they are costly and questioned their need.

The rules published by the Interior Department came nearly six years after the catastrophic blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and injured many others aboard Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The out-of-control leak dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

The rules target blowout preventers, massive valve-like devices meant to prevent oil and gas from escaping when a driller loses control of a well. The device failed in the BP spill.

Officials said the rules will improve the inspection, maintenance and repair of blowout preventers. For example, the devices will need to be broken down and inspected every five years.

In addition, drilling of highly complex wells must be monitored in real-time by experts onshore.

The rules also set out standards called “safe drilling margins” for the design, casing, cementing and other work that goes into drilling a well.

On a teleconference, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called the rules “a vital part of our extensive reform agenda to strengthen, update and modernize our offshore energy program using lessons learned from Deepwater Horizon.”

Erik Milito, the upstream group director for the American Petroleum Institute, said his group was reviewing the rules, which he said might stifle innovation and actually make drilling less safe.