A trade group representing oil and natural gas producers is taking steps to create a Center for Offshore Safety, which mirrors the industry-managed offshore safety institute proposed by the presidential commission on the BP plc oil spill earlier this year (see NGI, Jan. 17). At the same time, the Interior Department has picked members of an ocean energy advisory panel who have been tasked with providing advice on how best to establish a safety institute within the department. The industry and Interior safety efforts are separate, but related.

“This is a rollout of the institute” proposed by the BP commission, said John Modine, director of the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) global industry services, which will be involved with the new offshore safety center. The board of directors of API last Thursday endorsed the center.

The BP commission, in its report on the BP Macondo well blowout and subsequent oil spill, said it was “essential [that the] safety institute operate apart from API,” which it claimed is “culturally ill-suited to drive a safety revolution” in the industry.

“We disagree with the oil spill commission on that part,” Modine said. He further noted that Commission Co-Chair William Reilly, who was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush, “has since changed his opinion on that,” and he believes it makes sense to use API’s technical resources.

The safety center will be organized, run and administered by API, but it will be separate from the producer group’s lobbying activities, he said. A new governing board — which would include offshore operators, manufacturers of offshore equipment, and service and supply companies — will determine “what the center will look like,” oversee the safety activities and hire an executive director.

The center would be based in Houston and be open to all offshore oil and gas operators, not just API members, Modine said. The members would pay a membership fee that would go toward funding the center. He said it was too early to estimate the cost of membership.

API’s goal is to have the operational framework for the safety center worked out, the governing board selected and an executive director hired by the end of the year, Modine said.

In an unrelated development, the Interior Department announced the industry, academic and federal government representatives who will sit on its Ocean Energy Advisory Committee, a permanent advisory panel of experts who will provide guidance on improving offshore safety, well containment and spill response.

Former Sandia National Laboratory Director Tom Hunter, who was a member of the scientific team assembled to assist in containing and capping BP plc’s Macondo well, will chair the 15-member committee. The blowout of the Macondo well resulted in an explosion aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig last April, killing 11 workers (see NGI, April 26, 2010).

The committee would make recommendations to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Michel Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM), with respect to establishing a Ocean Energy Safety Institute within the department, said Dr. Brad J. Blythe, an oceanographer with BOEM who is the designated federal official for the committee.

“This is completely separate from what the API is doing” in creating an offshore safety center, he said. “API is free to do whatever they want to do.”

Offshore industry representatives named to the committee are Charlie Williams, chief scientist for well engineering and production technology, Shell Oil Co.; Paul Siegele, president of Chevron’s Energy Technology Co.; Joseph Gebara, senior manager, structural engineer of Technip USA Inc.; and Don Jacobsen, senior vice president, operations with Noble Drilling Services Inc.

The federal government members of the committee include: Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement; Christopher Smith, deputy assistant secretary for oil and natural gas in the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy; Capt. Patrick Little, commanding officer of the Marine Safety Center at the U.S. Coast Guard; Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for solid water and emergency response, Environmental Protection Agency; David Westerholm, director of the Office of Response and Restoration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Steve Hickman, a geophysicist with Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey.

Committee members representing the academic community and nongovernmental organizations are: Nancy Leveson, professor of system safety and process safety, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Richard Sears, senior science and engineering advisor and chief scientist, National Commission of the BP Deepwater Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling; Tad Patzek, professor and chairman, Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, University of Texas at Austin; and Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society.

The committee may establish technical working groups to focus on critical areas related to offshore drilling, such as drilling and workplace safety; intervention and containment; and oil spill response, according to Interior.

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