WASHINGTON — For decades, the federal government has kept an eye on offshore drilling by deploying inspectors to conduct on-site reviews of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
But when the inspectors leave, drilling continues virtually unmonitored, exposing a weakness in the government’s oversight of offshore oil and gas exploration.
Now, the nation’s top drilling regulator is taking aim at that vulnerability, with a plan to supplement rig inspections by putting government engineers to work studying pressure readings, fluid levels and other real- time data streaming from offshore wells.
In the future, “we may rely somewhat less on our inspectors going on rigs, having their clipboards, going through lists and checking whether the rigs meet certain requirements,” said Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Instead, he said, “there is a need for more instrumentation on these rigs to provide real-time kinds of electronic data to us as a regulator.”
“We need people who are skilled and trained in understanding that kind of data,” added Bromwich, who spoke at a Platts Energy Podium newsmaker event Oct. 12.
Bromwich’s vision could provide a framework for his coming overhaul of the way the federal government inspects offshore facilities — changes prompted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The government now has 56 inspectors and 114 engineers that focus on thousands of offshore facilities in the Gulf of Mexico — a number that administration officials and lawmakers have called woefully inadequate.
The administration has asked Congress to give the bureau $100 million, which would help pay for 200 more employees.
Bromwich is visiting Texas and Louisiana colleges this week as part of a recruiting drive to hire 30 new inspectors and 30 new engineers.
In the wake of the gulf oil spill, some lawmakers called for the government to go further and put inspectors on offshore rigs to monitor drilling activities around the clock.
