THE US government has ordered the break-up of the Minerals Management Service.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has signed an order creating three independent agencies within the Interior Department.
Crucially, safety is no longer the responsibility of this entity. As with the UK North Sea, it took a disaster to trigger the decision to split safety from oversight of the industry.
In the UK’s case, it was the Piper Alpha disaster of July 6, 1988, in which 167 personnel perished in a massive fireball.
On this occasion, it is the loss of 11 crew from the Transocean rig, Deepwater Horizon (working on contract to BP), when it suffered a blowout on April 20, sinking on April 22, coupled with the consequent and biggest oil spill in American history.
The three new agencies are the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which will oversee leases; the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is charged with assuring safe drilling and production operations within US waters, and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue to collect fees and royalties.
The replacement of MMS by the three new agencies is intended to carry out President Barack Obama’s order to end the “cosy relationship” between companies that drill for oil&gas and the MMS.