The U.S.Coast Guard should make sure that annual security inspections are conducted of all Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) facilities and upgrade its database where inspection information is stored, the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) recommended in a new report. Until then, the security of offshore facilities will be spotty at best, the agency said.

The Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, “has…issued guidance, which states that Coast Guard personnel should conduct security inspections of OCS facilities annually, but [it] has conducted about one-third of these inspections from 2008 through 2010. Further the Coast Guard does not have procedures in place to ensure that its field units conduct these inspections. The Coast Guard [also] does not have procedures in place to ensure that its field units conduct these inspections,” said the report by GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress.

“Consequently the Coast Guard may not be meeting one of its stated goals of reducing the risk and mitigating the potential results of an act that could threaten the security of personnel, the OCS facility, the environment and the public .”

Moreover, the GAO said the Coast Guard faces challenges in summarizing inspection results. “Its database for storing inspection data has limitations that make it difficult to determine if security inspections were conducted. For example, there is no data field to identify OCS facilities, which makes it difficult to readily analyze whether required inspections were conducted,” the agency said.

The Coast Guard’s inspections of deepwater ports are even more limited. The agency’s “guidance for deepwater ports does not call for annual security inspections, and it has conducted only one security inspection at a deepwater port from 2008 through 2010,” the GAO said. Coast Guard officials said they plan to begin annual security inspections of the deepwater ports, but the GAO believes that the “limitations in [its] inspection database and lack of guidance available to database users may complicate the Coast Guard’s management and oversight of inspections at deepwater ports,” the report said.

“Unless the Coast Guard addresses these database limitations and issues updated guidance to database users, it will be difficult for the Coast Guard to verify that the deepwater ports are complying with applicable maritime security requirements.”

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