The US government’s Department of the Interior is all set to unveil on Thursday its much-anticipated new safety rules for offshore oil and gas drilling.
Energy companies are braced to respond negatively having had a foretaste of what’s in store with the original proposal which was made this time last year.
The biggest talking point about that sneak peek was the much stricter requirements for well-control equipment, intended to prevent any repeats of the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010.
Industry powers said last year and have maintained since that those rules would impose such onerous extra costs on the business that drilling would be severely curtailed, lowering output, and hurting the economy and employment figures.
They are unlikely to sing a different tune even if, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, the actual regulations are somewhat less stringent than in the proposal.
Green groups that support the first proposals would like the administration of President Barack Obama to go further in order to safeguard marine environments from potential repeats of the Deepwater Horizon incident.
On 20 April, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig suffered an explosion and fire that killed 11 people, followed by the uncapped well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for almost three months.
