Macondo lessons

Drilling safety

Regarding “Never forget Macondo” (Page A14 May 4), the editorial mischaracterized regulatory review efforts currently underway at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. The editorial expressed worries that many, including the U.S. government and our agency, commonly referred to as BSEE, might have forgotten the lessons of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy and other offshore incidents. For the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, nothing could be further from the truth.

What happened on the Deepwater Horizon and to the Macondo well greatly harmed my home state of Louisiana, claimed the lives of 11 offshore workers and caused sustained, lifelong injuries that continue to impact others who were aboard that day and will never be forgotten. The editorial did not mention that BSEE is not proposing any changes to the rules enacted in the immediate aftermath of Deepwater Horizon: the Drilling Safety Rule and the Safety and Environmental Management Systems Rules (commonly called SEMS I and SEMS II).

The revisions our agency proposed recently are a set of changes to the 2016 Well Control Rule. After a careful review of the Well Control Rule’s 342 provisions, the BSEE team of career engineers and regulatory specialists proposed revisions for less than 18 percent of them. The team determined that none of the proposed rule changes would ignore or contradict any of those recommendations or alter any provision of the 2016 Well Control Rule in a way that would make the result inconsistent with those recommendations.

I am on record as having said, “We must never have another Deepwater Horizon or anything close to it.” We owe this to the men and women who each day put on their hard hats and steel toe boots and kiss their families goodbye to do the hard work necessary to fuel America. Scott Angelle, director,

Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement