WASHINGTON — Two key Senate committees Wednesday approved legislation that would change the way the federal government regulates offshore oil drilling and penalizes companies for oil spills, demonstrating lawmakers’ eagerness to respond to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Both measures passed on bipartisan voice votes. One, approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would raise the civil and criminal penalties for a spill, require more safety equipment redundancies, boost the number of federal safety inspectors and demand additional precautions for deep-water drilling. The other, passed by the Environment and Public Works Committee, would remove oil companies’ $75 million liability limit and retroactively remove the liability cap for BP and the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
They will now head to the Senate floor.
On the House side, lawmakers have begun debating a bill that would impose additional safeguards on offshore and onshore drilling, and the Natural Resources Committee is preparing to take up a bill that would radically overhaul federal regulation and oversight of offshore drilling.
As waves caused by Hurricane Alex slowed cleanup operations, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and the environment, said BP failed to mention the prospect of a hurricane or tropical storm affecting any potential oil spill in the response plan it submitted to federal authorities for the gulf a year ago.
“The BP plan had walruses in the gulf but no hurricanes,” Markey said. “Walruses haven’t been in the gulf in a few million years, while a hurricane is just a few hundred miles from the spill site right now. This is yet another example of BP serial complacency.”
BP spokesman Andrew Gowers declined to comment.
In Colorado
Where’s Alex?
Hurricane Alex made landfall Wednesday night as a powerful Category 2 storm on Mexico’s northeast coast. Its winds had strengthened to 105 mph with heavy rains that flooded roads and forced people to evacuate fishing villages in Mexico and coastal areas of southeastern Texas. It spawned two tornadoes around Brownsville, Texas. No injuries were reported.
