The Deepwater Horizon accident 10 years ago killed 11 workers and dumped 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The industry has formed two emergency-response firms for similar incidents, but environmentalists say more regulations are needed.
"We really see those changes as a modernization of the regulatory requirements," says Debra Phillips, senior vice president at the American Petroleum Institute.
Phillips says much of the original rule was left in place. She says other parts of it were overly prescriptive and didn't take into account that individual deep water wells can have very different characteristics. She says the rule changes give drillers more flexibility. "You've got opportunities to customize your technology based on the realities of the drilling situation which, at the end of the day, can actually make the site safer," says Phillips.A lot of the regulatory changes were made in consultation with industry groups, such as API. That alone generates skepticism among critics, especially now that President Trump has"We know that when they drill, they spill," says Hoskins.
It's worth noting that in the past decade there hasn't been another major offshore spill in the U.S. like the Deepwater Horizon. In fact, the two companies standing by to cap a well blowout have never even deployed their billions of dollars' worth of equipment for anything other than drills. And not all offshore drilling accidents are the same. A 2004 spill happened when Hurricane Ivan toppled a rig in the Gulf of Mexico and underground wells were buried in a mudslide. It took"I've gotten the question over the years, 'Is it safe to drill?'" says retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who was the national incident commander for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response.
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