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BSEE – Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement
Joe Perino discusses how the offshore drilling regulatory environment has evolved since the Deepwater Horizon accident.
Within five weeks of the incident, the Mining and Mineral Management Services was reorganized into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. BOEMRE, or Bome-ray for short.
BOEMRE
BOEMRE combined the two functions of the three that the Mining and Mineral Services used to do. If you recall, the Mining and Mineral Services did three things: One, they collected the revenues from the oil and gas production; secondly, they established a strategic plan for the development of the offshore resources along with approving drilling permits and production permits; then, third, they issued regulations and compliance rules on safety and environmental issues, which the operators have to comply with and they enforce those rules.
By late 2010, the revenue accounting function of the old MMS had been transferred from the MMS to the Department of Interior’s Office of Policy Management and Budget, where it continues to reside today and it is now called the Office of Natural Resources Revenue.
BOEM and BSEE
Later on in 2011, about a year later, BOEMRE was split into two parts. Part one was BOEM or Bome, and the second part was BSEE, or the Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement.
BOEM’s responsibilities included the strategic plan for the development of the outer continental shelf resources, meaning the leasing program; secondly, they handled all of the lease sales and the renewable energy programs; third, of course, is that they managed all of the drilling and production permits.
BSEE on the other hand, or [Bessie 00:07:18], was all about regulations and enforcement, and they’re responsible for issuing the standards and guidelines for offshore operators for operations, for spill response. They also have an enforcement division, and they’ve set up quite a few guidelines, rules and regulations that have been promulgated since 2011 and most recently in 2016 for compliance by the operators.
BSEE – Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement
Now, from this point forward, I’m not going to talk any further about the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEME, but instead focus on the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, or BSEE because it is what they have been doing that has prompted the industry response from operators, oil field service companies and contractors. Let’s spend a few minutes on what the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has done since they’ve come into being in 2010 and then in 2011.
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