NEW ORLEANS — Federal regulators did not need this week’s explosion aboard a state-of-the-art rig to know the offshore drilling industry needed new safety rules: Dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries over the past several years had already convinced them that changes were needed.
The U.S. Minerals and Management Service is developing regulations aimed at preventing human error, which it identified as a factor in many of the more than 1,400 offshore oil-drilling accidents between 2001 and 2007.
What caused Tuesday’s massive blast off the Louisiana coast is unknown. Steven Newman, chief executive of Transocean Ltd., which owns the Deepwater Horizon, said the company would assist investigators in determining the cause of the blast.
The rig was the site of a 2005 fire found to have been caused by human error. An MMS investigation determined that a crane operator on the rig had become distracted while refueling the crane, allowing diesel fuel to overflow. Records show the fire was quickly contained but caused $60,000 in damage to the crane.
An MMS review published last year found 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 oil-rig accidents from 2001 to 2007. An analysis of the accidents found a lack of communication between the operator and contractors, a lack of written procedures, a failure to enforce existing procedures and other problems.
“It appears that equipment failure is rarely the primary cause of the incident or accident,” the report said.
As a result of the findings, the MMS is developing rules that would require rig operators to develop programs focused on preventing human error, an area that received relatively little attention in the past. The agency, which has yet to implement the new rules and is reviewing public comment on the proposal, also suggested audits once every three years on programs to prevent human error.
BP PLC, which leased the Deepwater Horizon, opposes what it says are “extensive prescriptive regulations.”
“We believe industry’s current safety and environmental statistics demonstrate that the voluntary programs implemented . . . have been and continue to be very successful,” said Richard Morrison, a vice president with BP America Inc. in a September letter opposing the proposed rules.
Opponents of President Barack Obama’s plan for more offshore drilling, particularly off the East Coast, say the Deepwater Horizon explosion should be taken as a warning to slow the fervor to “drill, baby, drill.”
“I would hope it would serve as another wake-up call on this issue that there is no such thing as safe oil drilling,” said Sara Wan, a member of the California Coastal Commission, a state regulatory agency.
Obama showed no sign of budging Friday. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president still thinks increasing domestic oil production can be done safely, securely and without harming the environment.
No new lease sales are planned before at least 2012.
