NEW ORLEANS – Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) Director Scott Angelle emphasized BSEE’s commitment to safe and environmentally sustainable energy production during meetings in Louisiana last week with the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association and BSEE Gulf of Mexico Region staff.
“BSEE’s portfolio is offshore safety, providing leadership in environmental stewardship, and making sure we are doing what we can to help America achieve energy security,” said Angelle to members of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association.
Angelle also emphasized BSEE’s focus on driving safety performance and environmental stewardship through innovation and collaboration.
“When compared to calendar year 2016, in 2018, BSEE increased overall inspections, spent more time physically inspecting equipment, implemented more safety and environmental initiatives, and expanded its focus beyond prescriptive regulatory compliance to include managing and mitigating risk,” said Angelle. “We are not looking at an either/or approach; we are instituting the ‘and’ equation. We can have robust production and it will be safe and responsibly produced.
When speaking with members of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, Angelle highlighted the role deep water energy production plays in building a stronger offshore energy industry and thanked the group for their critical support role.
“The Gulf of Mexico is changing,” Angelle said. “We are seeing bigger, fewer, deeper and more complex platforms replacing shallow water facilities. ”
To illustrate the change, Angelle pointed to a 73 percent increase in wells producing in deep water and a 198 percent increase in deep water oil production during the last 20 years, while shallow water saw declines in both.
In a series of working sessions with BSEE Gulf of Mexico Region staff, Angelle focused on the Bureau’s internal Change Management Initiatives. The Bureau-wide program has been established to improve BSEE’s performance in key areas that focus on safety performance and environmental stewardship
“We are using metrics and data to drive offshore operators’ performance and we are using it to drive our own,” Angelle told staff. “What you do is more important than you may realize. It is vital that we work together to build a safer and stronger offshore energy industry. America is counting on it.”
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) is the lead federal agency charged with improving safety and ensuring environmental protection related to the offshore energy industry, primarily oil and natural gas, on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Currently one in five barrels of oil is produced on the OCS with 99 percent of that production occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.
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