Attorney General Becerra: Illegal Attempt to Rollback Safety Rules by Trump Administration Risks Another Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster

SACRAMENTO — California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a comment letter before the U.S. Department of Interior expressing grave concerns over a proposal to rollback Blowout Preventer and Well Control regulations written in the aftermath of the 2010 British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil tragedy. Eight years ago, an explosion tore through BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing eleven workers and unleashing a torrent of crude oil for 87 consecutive days. The massive and uncontrolled oil discharge caused irreversible damage to marine life, the marine environment and, consequently, dependent businesses and connected economy.   

“We learned from the BP Deepwater Horizon tragedy that the oil and gas industry didn’t police itself. Now, Secretary Zinke wants to slash the very protections established to prevent another Deepwater Horizon disaster. Returning to the old, discredited ways of doing business in oil and gas simply underscores how profits trump workers’ lives and safety in this Administration,” said Attorney General Becerra. “California knows all too well the toll that offshore oil and gas exploration takes on our economy, our environment, and our health. We won’t stand idly by as the Trump Administration puts our nation at risk of another Deepwater Horizon tragedy.”

Blowout preventers are safety valves created to automatically seal a well which has experienced a blowout. Government investigations into the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster determined that a flaw in the well’s blowout preventer stopped the valve from operating properly. The Trump Administration now seeks to change the rules that were created to protect against a blowout and were based on the government investigation’s conclusions.

Attorney General Becerra’s comment letter to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement expresses a number of concerns about the Trump Administration’s proposed rulemaking, noting that the Trump Administration:

• Declined to fully involve those who will be affected by the proposed rulemaking, like state and local governments, tribal nations, non-profits, and academics;
• Failed to sufficiently provide evidence or data to justify the specific proposed rollbacks or any revision in general;
• Neglected to issue a final Environmental Impact Statement to build upon its initial draft, leaving the question of the proposal’s environmental risks without clear answers; and
• Proposed new offshore drilling programs on the coast of California that rely on the regulations they now propose to roll back.

On May 11, Attorney General Becerra criticized the proposed changes after the Trump Administration published the proposed rules in the Federal Register. Attorney General Becerra has also expressed his opposition to the Trump Administration’s proposal to open California’s coast to new offshore drilling on numerous occasions. In March, he submitted a 22-page comment letter detailing a plethora of reasons why opening California’s coasts to new offshore drilling would be unjustified, unprecedented, and ill-advised. He quickly responded to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s decision to exempt Florida from offshore drilling on January 9, penned a New York Times op-ed titled “Florida Isn’t the Only State That Will Be Hurt by Offshore Drilling” on January 16, and sent a multistate letter to Secretary Zinke on February 1.

A copy of the comment letter is available here.