Must Be Something in the Water

The WSJ reports that oil workers in the US experience four times the death rate of their European counterparts.

A Wall Street Journal examination of the MMS's track record found several instances of the agency identifying potential safety problems and then either not requiring follow-up or relying on the industry to craft a solution. In some cases, the industry didn't do its part.

The Journal also found that the safety record of U.S. offshore drilling compares unfavorably, in terms of deaths and serious accidents, to other major oil-producing countries. Over the past five years, an offshore oil worker in the U.S. was more than four times as likely to be killed than a worker in European waters, and 23% more likely to sustain an injury, according to International Association of Drilling Contractors data, which is adjusted for man-hours worked.

Asked about The Journal's findings on its safety record and practices, MMS officials said in an interview Wednesday that the agency plans to toughen its oversight.

There's also this choice bit:

Defenders of the agency say enforcement isn't its primary responsibility. Stephen Allred, who as Assistant Secretary of the Interior oversaw MMS from 2006 to 2009, said the agency does conduct spot inspections of oil rigs, and checks operators' compliance with safety procedures. However, "Their role is not to baby-sit" the operators, he said. The agency's primary task during inspections is to verify how much oil is being pumped, which is key to another MMS duty, maximizing payments the government receives for oil and gas rights from energy producers.

What's funny about that viewpoint is that the group charged with maximizing the royalty payments is precisely the people who were up to their neck in industry collusion, sexual peccadilloes, and drugs.

It would be fair to argue that the people involved in those scandals were not regulators - but then you'd have to admit that the people in charge of the MMS "primary task" were corrupt. And then you'd logically have to ask - do secondary tasks in the MMS receive better people and more funding?

Signs point to no:

Ethical problems also hit the offshore oil program. In 2009, Donald C. Howard, the former regional supervisor of the Gulf of Mexico region for MMS, pled guilty and was sentenced to a year's probation in federal court in New Orleans for lying about receiving gifts from an offshore drilling contractor.