Offshore Drilling Safety Requires Adherence to Worker Safety Rules
New safety regulations on offshore drilling may add needed checks and safeguards to prevent catastrophic blowouts and offshore accidents, according to Houston maritime attorney Kurt Arnold. But, Arnold observed, the onus remains on oil and gas exploration companies to follow safety rules and avoid the kind of corner-cutting that jeopardizes offshore workers’ lives.
While efforts to focus more attention on offshore worker safety and protection of rig workers are tragically overdue, Arnold, a founding partner of the Houston maritime law firm of Arnold & Itkin LLP, cautioned that "the most stringent safety regulations won’t protect workers when reckless oil companies disregard them.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) outlined new federal regulations and safety procedures for offshore drilling December 8 at the First International Offshore Oil & Gas Law Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jason Itkin, a Houston maritime lawyer and founding partner of Arnold & Itkin LLP, observed how tragically unfortunate it was that tougher safety rules weren’t in place last spring to help to prevent the fatal explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon. “It’s unfortunate that government offshore worker safety regulations for too long failed to keep pace with the oil and gas industry’s expansion into greater depths,” says Itkin, whose firm is representing several injured Transocean workers.
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