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The presidential oil spill commission said Tuesday that the federal government should require tougher regulation, stiffer fines and a new industry-run safety organization, recommendations that face an uncertain future in the new Congress.
Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), one of the commission's co-chairmen, said that the Deepwater Horizon accident was "both foreseeable and preventable," and that Congress and the administration needed to enact reforms in order to prevent a repeat of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
"I am sad to say that part of the answer is the fact that our government helped let it happen," Graham said. "Our regulators were consistently outmatched."
The panel proposed several safeguards aimed at strengthening regulators' control over the oil and gas industry, including establishing an independent safety agency within the Interior Department that would be headed by someone for a fixed term in order to insulate the appointee from political interference. Graham said such a person should have "a background of both science and management."
It also called for funding the regulatory agency that oversees offshore drilling, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), with fees from the companies who are tapping into the nation's petroleum resource.
William K. Reilly, the commission's other co-chairman, emphasized that it would be a mistake to focus just on the three companies involved in last year's accident. "The solution to the problem has to be industry-wide."
Graham, who along with Reilly will testify before both the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 26, said he hoped the "searing impact" of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its aftermath would "override an ideological preference for less government, less government intrusion and less government cost" that could impede legislative action.
Both Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu (D) and David Vitter (R) endorsed the panel's recommendation that 80 percent of the Clean Water Act fines and penalties linked to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill go to environmental restoration. Landrieu said it would give "added ammunition" to a proposal that already has White House support.
But in a sign of how the two parties remain divided on how to regulate drilling, Landrieu said the report found a path forward for deepwater drilling while Vitter criticized it for failing to do so.
"The report could have easily said 'end of deepwater drilling,' but it doesn't," Landrieu told reporters in a conference call. "I think that's the really big takeaway - that this commission, having examined a horrible incident that occurred, has basically concluded that deepwater can be done safely."
In an interview, Vitter said he was concerned the report "didn't make any statement, any observation about the gulf still almost being shut down, nine months after the fact."
He added that although he was open to creating a new safety office within Interior, and didn't object outright to the idea of imposing fees to help regulate offshore energy exploration, he lacked confidence in the administration's ability to oversee drilling operations.
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