I have no experience in that segment of the industry, but as a retired naval officer I generally believe that most safety regulations are written in the blood of those who were lost to inadequate safety protections.
How do the working professional mariners here feel about changes such as this one? Will it just inprove the bottom line for the shareholders, or will it have a positive impact on oil exploration and job availability in the GoM? At what potential cost?
It is payback from the Cheeto to the scumbags he wants to love him. It is a low rent move to put more cash into the republican war chest. It is another sign of a nation in serious decline.
Blah blah blah. It’s only in decline if you are a socialist, which as I recall, you claim to be. With the corporate tax cuts businesses will be reinvesting here, in this country, and growing. Hiring workers. Paying higher wages.
I’m not sure what specific regs were rolled back but I can say that after the Deepwater Horizon disaster regs were quickly put in to place as a knee jerk reaction (which is how it usually happens in the Patch) - some of which were actually beneficial, some of which were ridiculous. Even the EPA got on the band wagon and created requirements that were either A) undoable B) offered absolutely no benefit or protection to the environment or C) both. It was shocking, especially where the EPA was concerned, how insipid and ridiculous some of those regs were, proving, once again, the propensity to create regulations just for the sake of “doing something” with out any kind of thought process behind them. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some things that seriously needed to be addressed and were, but the majority of the regs/policies/etc that came on the back side of that disaster were ridiculous.
It was also a giant bummer because government entities that had, in the past, pretty much ignored the offshore drillers all of a sudden got involved in making policy for the offshore drillers, creating a slew of new requirements and etc that made no sense - so not only were we dealing with safety departments internally who were continuously trying to justify their existence, now we had government employees with literally NO experience in our industry doing the same.
So, while I understand how people just hate Trump and continuously find fault with every thing he does because he is a fairly offensive sort of a guy, I think, in this case at least, he’s moving in the right direction. Once you get past the bluster and crotch grabbing, the man moving in a pretty logical and beneficial (to the US at any rate) direction.
What exactly are they losing? The opportunity to pay crippling taxes? The opportunity to be 2nd class citizens in their own country? A country where an illegal border jumper has more rights than they do?
This country was created on and built by business and industry, not government.
I too am wondering exactly what is being rolled back but when they claim the savings to industry will be $3M a year leads me to believe all the major blowout preventer regulations enacted remain in force
“The Obama rules targeted blowout preventers, massive valve-like devices designed to prevent spills from wells on the ocean floor. The preventer used by BP failed. The rules required more frequent inspections of those and other devices and dictated that experts onshore monitor drilling of highly complex wells in real time.”
Look it’s not like some of the “geter done” attitudes really left the oilfield anyways.
If it clears out the stupid requirements so there’s actually a minuscule chance of the good requirements getting followed, all the better.
People get sign blind too easy and then bypass the important requirements that allow people to you know, make it home each hitch with all them pretty fingers and toes.
Good morning
Just woke up
Don’t be sign blind.
That’s my motto for today
Inflated money savings claimed by these oil companies from dismissal of regulations [protections] is not the point, to them that’s not even a good tip for the executive dining room. What excites them is not having someone looking too closely at what they are doing.
Whenever there is a blanket dismissal of regulations rather than a study to eliminate duplicate or meaningless regulations you can bet there are paid lobbyists handing bribes out.
And/or writing laws themselves, like the current tax bill that just got enacted. And yet, you have people, like Bayrunner, supporting Trump and whining about “crippling taxes”. The irony is rich, and even more richer, considering that the people who support this, are the ones who are going to be affected the most. The southern states.
The really significant proposal is to merge the safety regulators (BOEMRE) back into the parent organization (BSEE). The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is that BSEE is first and foremost a marketing organization – offshore oil leases are second only to the IRS as a source of government revenue. You don’t have to be an organizational genius to figure out what happens when safety reports to the marketeers. So the clear signal is that it doesn’t matter what the regulations say, we’re going back to the old MMS days when enforcement was lax to nonexistent.
Do I think that this proposal, if carried out, will suddenly cause reputable operators to start acting stupid? Not really. Do I worry that there is some marginal, financially stressed operator out there that is going to take advantage of this to cut corners and make all the mistakes BP and Transocean did in 2010? You betcha.
"I’m not sure what specific regs were rolled back but I can say that after the Deepwater Horizon disaster regs were quickly put in to place as a knee jerk reaction (which is how it usually happens in the Patch) "
These rules:
“President Obama put the safety rules in place late last year, after six years of analysis following the 2010 BP Plc oil spill,”
Well, there were some that were put in to place after six years of analysis, and then there were the stack recertifications, the EPA regs, etc etc etc that were put in to place immediately. None of them helped, really.
On a good note, the operators are at least a little bit if not a lot less prone to act stupid and push push push. But that didn’t have much to do with new regs, and more to do with the actions of the DOJ.