BOEMRE Report

National Commission (2011), Chief Counsel s report (2011), BOEMRE report (2011). 

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). Report Regarding the Cause of the April 20, 2010 Macondo Well Blowout. September 14, 2011. 

The BOEMRE Report was published as a Joint Investigation with the United States Coast Guard. At the time of publication the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Regulatory Enforcement (BOEMRE) had replaced the Minerals... 

Although the BOEMRE Report describes technical issues in depth, it also provides insights with regard to the topics of culture and risk management. 

The final BOEMRE report gave the central cause of the Macondo-Deepwater Horizon accident as failure of the cement barrier in the production casing string . 

The final BOEMRE report also criticized poor risk management, last-minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training by the companies and individuals responsible. 

It is important to recognize that the act of inspection can itself cause reliability and integrity problems. For example, the BOEMRE Report on the Macondo incident (BOEMRE, 2011) provides the following quotation from someone involved in that event. 

With occupational safety measurement is fairly simple recordables and other statistics provide a reliable indication of how a company is doing and how it compares to others. The measurement of results with regard to Process Safety is much more tricky. But the measurement problem is even more severe when it comes to the topic of culture. In particular it is very difficult to assess people are people issues. For example, one of the reports that was written following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe (BOEMRE, 2011) records in some detail the tension that existed between two of the managers and publishes some of the emails that were sent prior to the event. These clashes illustrate the difficulties of implementing a positive culture, particularly when personalities clash or department managers are squabbling with one another. 

Under the proposed rule, after evaluating the third party s qualifications, BOEMRE could accept or not accept the operator s independent third-party nomination. If BOEMRE does not accept the nomination of an independent third party, then the operator must submit a new nomination before the audit may go forward. The audit report, once completed, must be submitted to BOEMRE and the operator. BOEMRE will notify the operator of whether or not the audit report is sufficient and acceptable. Under the proposal, the operator would be responsible for the costs of the audit. ... 

Michael R. Bromwich, Director of the BOEMRE, Implementation Plan in Response to the Outer Continental Shelf Safety Oversight Board s September 1,2010 Report to the Secretary of the Interior, 4 September 2010. 

The main reason for the limited information about safely indicators is that BOEMRE has limited access to information, and the BOEMRE-led U.S. regime and U.S. law do not require annual updates of the offshore petroleum industry s risk level (Skogdalen et al. 2010). Traditionally the industry has been required to report LTI and oil releases. Lately the industry has also been required to report gas emissions. ... 

In addition, the regime calls for industry to report performance data on voluntary basis. According to BOEMRE, it replaced the Mineral Management Service (MMS) after the Macondo accident, and the MMS had collaborated with the U.S. Coast Guard and representatives of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas industry to develop a suite of consensus formulas for gauging the industry s safety and environmental performance since 1997 (BOEMRE 2011). These formulas, called the OCS Performance Measures, are used to calculate twenty annual, OCS-wide performance indices. The indices provide the public with information about performance trends, and they allow OCS lease operators to compare their performance with industry averages . The performance measures are presented in Table 9.2. 

BOEMRE and BSEE functions and responsibilities are described at the Web site, http //www.doi.gov. The Web site addresses the organisation and responsibilities of each division and region of the bureau. All environmental studies and technical research is posted to the Web site. Statistics and investigation reports conducted by BOEMRE are posted or linked within the Web site. All Notices to Lessees which provide clarification of regulations are posted on the Web site. The site also provides a Fast Fact query function that allows the public to query many aspects of the data that BOEMRE controls, including, but not limited to ... 

Most comments expressed that BOEMRE significantly underestimated the cost of developing, revising, and implementing the SEMS program. Comments also stated that BOEMRE dramatically underestimated the major new documentation and reporting burden that the rule will impose on offshore operators. 

The report is basically saying that the transition from MMS to BOEMRE was a step in the right direction, but that further improvements to the enforcement of rules and regulations are required. 

Industry has had two responses to the above requirement in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon incident. They are the Helix Fast Response System and the Marine Well Containment System (MWCC). The BOEMRE required that companies use one of these two systems before drilling permits could be issued following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Both companies reported that their systems were ready in February 2011, although the MWCC System will undergo much more development. 

Since this report was commissioned by the MMS/BOEMRE, it is important to note what the committee had to say about the role of regulators, specifically the BSEE, in the development of an offshore safety culture. The following quotation is from the report s Summary ... 

Effective July 17, 2006, BOEMRE revised the regulations for incident reporting. Related to this chart, chants were made to the reporting criteria for Injuries, Loss of Well Control incidents. Collisions, and Other Incidents. Thus the number of incidents shown in these categories for 2006 and beyond may be affected by this change when compared to previous years. 

The MMS is the precursor organization to BOEMRE—the agency that currently manages offshore safety regulations in federal waters. The National Commission report (p. 77) to... 

SEMS is a management system, and so should be audited on a regular basis. The scope, frequenoy, management and reporting of the audits should all be considered. The BOEMRE/SEMP requirements are typioal of any audit. 

If BOEMRE conducts the audit, BOEMRE will provide a report of the findings and conclusions within 30 days of the audit. 

Table 5.1 shows that there are 41 moderate activity operators. They report good compliance with SEMP. But they are also likely to have a considerable amotmt of work to do to comply with the SEMS standard due to BOEMRE s additional requirements. 

BOEMRE is clearly sensitive to the costs that they are imposing on operators with SEMS. The rule contains approximately five pages of information to do with their estimates of the cost of the rule. The costs are divided according to operator size and management element (they do not provide figures for implementation costs for large operators because they all reported that their SEMS programs were already complete). 

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