Our Mission

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) works to promote safety, protect the environment, and conserve resources offshore through vigorous regulatory oversight and enforcement.

Background on BSEE

Since its establishment in 2011, BSEE has been 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).  The Bureau vigorously regulates oversight of worker safety, emergency preparedness, environmental compliance, and conservation of resources.  Our year-round work schedule includes conducting thousands of announced and unannounced inspections, developing safer technologies, mandating that each operator establish and follow their Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS), and carrying out investigations when serious incidents do occur.

Headquartered in Washington D.C., just two blocks from the White House in the Interior Department’s Stewart Lee Udall Main Interior Building, BSEE’s strength lies in the coordination that exists between the six national programs, three region offices (located in Anchorage, Camarillo (California), and New Orleans) and its five Gulf Coast district offices. Staff in the Sterling, Virginia annex and research arms in both Texas and New Jersey provide the Bureau and the energy industry with innovative solutions to safety issues and new approaches that lessen the impacts of oil spills and other environmental concerns.

BSEE is a forward-thinking regulator engaged in ongoing efforts to help industry develop and maintain a robust safety culture with a strong focus on offshore risk reduction.  Through incident reporting requirements, near-miss reporting, and real-time monitoring we are advancing the ability of the offshore industry to improve safety and respond quickly when incidents do occur. We believe that safety, environmental stewardship, and resource conservation are linked attributes. Therefore we address each of these three areas with equal vigor in order to drive the industry to take their responsibilities as seriously as we take ours.