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Washington (AFP) June 22, 2010 US lawmakers Tuesday introduced a bill to reform the rules on offshore drilling as the massive oil spill continued to spread in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill, introduced in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, would allow Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar to "improve the management, oversight, accountability, safety, and environmental protection." As previously announced by the White House, the bill also seeks to reorganize the controversial Minerals and Management Service (MMS) -- singled out for lax oversight in the wake of the Gulf disaster -- by splitting up its responsibilities to supervise drilling and collecting revenue. "This bill takes a number of important steps to ensure that the Outer Continental Shelf will be managed in a balanced, prudent and vigilant way, to ensure energy production, safety and protection of the environment," said the committee's Democratic chairman Jeff Bingaman. "The bill should give Secretary Salazar the tools he is asking for to correct many of the deficiencies in the MMS, which have come to light since the Deepwater Horizon disaster," said Senator Lisa Murkowski. A comprehensive shake-up of MMS continues amid scathing criticism of the agency for being too lax on enforcement of safety standards in offshore drilling and being too close with the companies it regulates. The legislation's introduction came on the day a US judge ruled against a six-month freeze imposed by the Obama administration on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. In a blow to the White House, district judge Martin Feldman ruled in favor of 32 oil firms which challenged the moratorium, calling the decision "invalid" and saying a freeze would "clearly ripple throughout the economy in this region." After the Gulf of Mexico disaster at an offshore oil rig leased by BP that ruptured an undersea well, President Barack Obama's administration announced a breakup of the agency's leasing and regulatory functions into two separate entities. Entering its ninth week, the oil spill disaster has, using the lowest US estimate, seen more than 90 million gallons spew into the Gulf of Mexico.
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US slaps BP with new 51-million-dollar spill billWashington (AFP) June 21, 2010 The White House on Monday slapped BP with a new 51-million-dollar bill, the third sent to the British energy giant and its partners for government expenses incurred in efforts to halt the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Officials have stressed that they would keep billing the British energy giant for all associated costs from America's biggest-ever environmental disaster, under a US law requiring ... read more |
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