Following the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf Coast, the Department of the Interior (DOI) bureau in charge of issuing and enforcing environmental and safety regulations acted relatively quickly to release its drilling safety rule (August 2012).
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DOI’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has now followed up on that initial action by promulgating a new and extensive set of requirements that carry out the technical and management recommendations made by federal and independent teams of experts that investigated the incident.
Many of BSEE’s regulations reference the industry standards for blowout preventers (BOPs); the BOP for the Deepwater Horizon rig failed to stop the flow of oil and to seal the well long enough for corrective actions to be taken.