The U.S. Department of the Interior said Monday that it wants to reverse some Trump administration rollbacks of offshore safety rules to prevent blowouts like the BP catastrophe that killed 11 people and fouled the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
A rig and supply vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, off the cost of Louisiana, are seen Sunday, April 10, 2011.
The changes are a step in the right direction but not far enough, said Diane Hoskins of the ocean environmental nonprofit Oceana. The agency is proposing to change seven out of the scores of revisions and additions made in 2019, director Kevin M. Sligh Sr. said during a phone news conference with Haaland.
Others would require operators to send failure data to the federal offshore safety agency rather than to designated third parties, and would cut a month off the time allowed to begin failure analyses and investigations, allowing three months rather than four.