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Washington (AFP) May 18, 2010 Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledged to revamp the US agency that regulates offshore drilling and admitted faults Tuesday as lawmakers grilled him about the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. "We need to clean up that house," Salazar said of his agency's Minerals and Management Service (MMS), amid scathing criticism of the body for being too lenient on enforcement of safety standards in offshore drilling. He promised MMS "more tools, more resources, more independence and greater authority," in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster at a BP-leased rig that ruptured an undersea well that continues to spew crude into the water. President Barack Obama's administration has announced a break-up of the agency's leasing and regulatory functions into two separate entities. While Salazar told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that "there are some bad apples at MMS," he insisted however that the majority of its 1,700 employees were "good public servants." Amid the blame being lobbed at the MMS, Obama himself joined in by slamming it as being too "cozy" with the companies it regulates. "To the extent that MMS employees were involved in any kind of negligence here or any other kind of failure, they will also be held accountable," Salazar told lawmakers. "One of the things that I hope happens as a result of this incident is that it's another wake-up call to all of us who have this collective responsibility to move forward with a new energy future." Last week, one MMS official told a hearing in New Orleans that the oil and gas industry largely policed its own drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico with little government supervision. And an official also said the regulatory agency did not enforce compliance with its "safety alerts" on underwater blowout preventers and allowed oil companies to inspect their own drilling equipment. Salazar's tense interaction with lawmakers came a day after Chris Oynes, a top MMS official overseeing offshore energy, announced his retirement amid the criticism. BP reported further progress Tuesday in containing the spill, saying that a tube inserted into the leaking oil pipe was siphoning off some 40 percent of the crude gushing into the Gulf, twice as much as a day earlier. The British energy giant reckons about 5,000 barrels, 210,000 gallons of crude, is leaking each day, although analysis from independent experts suggests the flow rate could be many times that. The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. It sank two days later, fracturing the mile-long riser pipe which is now streaming crude into the water some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast.
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BP says containing one fifth of spill; political pressure mountsNew Orleans, Louisiana (AFP) May 17, 2010 US President Barack Obama is launching a commission to probe the huge Gulf oil spill amid a growing political firestorm as BP said Monday a tube inserted into the gushing leak was siphoning 20 percent of the flow. The independent commission will be established by executive order in the coming days, an administration official said, and will supplement existing government inquiries into what h ... read more |
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