A greater percentage of offshore drilling and development plans has been approved without comprehensive environmental reviews in the Obama administration than in the Bush administration, a Denver Post review of federal data shows.
Since January 2009, more than 80 percent of the 670 Gulf of Mexico plans submitted by industry received so-called categorical exclusions from the Minerals Management Service, according to agency records. Between 2004 and 2008, under the Bush administration, MMS approved 66 percent of the 5,576 plans submitted.
The Obama administration has promoted offshore oil drilling and in March proposed expanding drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as along the Arctic and Atlantic coasts.
But in the wake of the April 20 explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, which left 11 dead and 5,000 barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day, the administration is changing its tack.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced plans to split MMS — which is responsible for leasing for parcels, permitting drilling, inspecting rigs and collecting royalties — into two.
A new independent agency will oversee safety and environmental inspections and enforcement.
Leasing, environmental reviews and permitting — including the use of categorical exclusions — and royalty collection would, however, be left with MMS.
“This is one of the biggest holes in the whole proposal,” said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “MMS environmental-impact statements have radically understated the risks and worst-case scenarios in the gulf.”
Salazar, speaking at a news conference Tuesday, also did not rule out continued use of categorical exclusions. Steps will be taken to improve environmental analysis of plans, he said. As part of that effort, the administration will submit a bill to Congress to change to 90 days the congressionally mandated 30-day deadline for MMS to act on oil company exploration plans.
“No agency can do a review in that time,” Salazar said.
The extra time will permit MMS to do additional environmental analysis that would “supplement” the environmental-impact statements MMS does for its five-year leasing plans, according to Salazar.
It is, however, unclear what the additional analysis would be, and critics contend that the environmental statements done now by MMS are weak.
“Their environmental-impact statements are very general,” said Holly Doremus, an environmental law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “Then everyone refers to those general impact statements all the way down the line as reasons you don’t need any more analysis.”
The lack of an specific environmental-impact statement for Deepwater Horizon is an example of the problem, Doremus said.
One reason there are no environmental-impact statements for individual wells — such as Deepwater Horizon — is because MMS relied upon a 2006 impact statement done for the 45 million-acre planning area in which the BP rig was operating.
“This happened to BP, but it could have happened to Exxon or Shell,” said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
And when there were discrepancies between the MMS impact statement and BP’s initial drilling plan, the agency still issued approvals that required no additional assessment.
For example, the 2006 environmental-impact statement for the Gulf of Mexico planning area estimated the maximum spill at about 4,600 barrels a day. The estimate was based on looking at spills between 1985 and 1999 — before the bigger rigs, like Deepwater Horizon, began operating 50 miles offshore.
“The new technology and deep water created a bigger risk,” said Keiran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “MMS never evaluated it.”
In the 2009 exploration plan BP submitted to MMS for Deepwater Horizon, the company estimated the worst-case uncontrolled blowout at 162,000 barrels a day — a rate more than 35 times higher than the agency’s impact-statement forecast.
Still, the MMS issued a categorical exemption for the project.
The MMS did not respond to a request for comment, but on its website it says it determined individual environmental-impact statements were not needed after “hundreds” of less formal environmental assessments showed no need.
Also, years had gone by without a major oil-platform spill.
“As the years pass, and you don’t get spills like this, it gives you confidence that everything is going to be OK,” said Hammond Eve, former MMS regional supervisor for environmental analysis, whose region included the Gulf of Mexico. “Then industry raises the questions that they’re wasting their time doing the same environmental impacts and we want a categorical exclusion.”
When it came to oil spill response plans, the story is similar. The Deepwater Horizon rig did not need its own spill plan because a plan existed for another rig in the vicinity, according to the company’s initial exploration plan.
“Everything is based on the most general information, with little site- specific information,” said Doremus.
Salazar in January took aim at MMS, but it was an effort to revamp the agency’s scandal-plagued division that collects royalties.
“For MMS, our primary efforts have been on the ethics side,” said Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes. “We’ve also had a major royalty-reform agenda looking to terminate the royalty-in-kind program.”
Under Tuesday’s proposal, a new agency for safety and environmental enforcement will be created with a staff of about 300, Salazar said.
The administration will seek an additional $29 million for inspections and enforcement. The 2010 MMS budget for inspections is $23 million. Also, the National Academy of Engineering has been asked to do an independent investigation to determine the cause of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
“MMS has been very much under our microscope from Day One and will continue to be,” Hayes said. “They are aware of that.”
Staff writers Burt Hubbard and Andrea Labak contributed to this report.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
Mike Riley: 202-662-8907 or mriley@denverpost.com
