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Review and Update of Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Offshore Oil and Gas Operations Inspection Program

Completed

The study committee shall review the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s (BSEE) current inspection program by addressing a series of themes and interrelated questions in order to identify potential improvements or enhancements. The review should consider BSEE’s inspection program and strategy in the context of ongoing changes in Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) operations, knowledge from previous National Academies’ reports, other domestic and international regulators, independent third parties, and industry experts.

Description

· Is BSEE’s “inspection program” effectively meeting its regulatory mission?

· Evaluate BSEE’s current risk-based inspection program and provide recommendations for improvements.

· What proven value-added practices used by other international regulators, such as but not limited to Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Mexico, can be best employed by BSEE to supplement its current inspection program?

· What process could BSEE use to determine the activities that a third party could perform in support of the inspection and verification functions? Are there other regulators with an inspection function that use external parties to perform parts of the inspection function, if so how and in what capacity? How would the regulator ensure that third parties are acting in the public interest and representing an extension of the government regulator? What type of oversight should be placed over third parties that inspect?

· What is the appropriate role of remote real-time monitoring and other safety enhancing technologies for the BSEE inspection program?

  • What current and potential policies, risks, technologies and practices should BSEE consider in evolving the inspection program in the near term (1 to 10 years) and the long term (> 10 years) to enhance safety and environmental protection?

Contributors

Committee

Chair

Member

Member

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Mark Hutchins

Staff Officer

Sponsors

Department of Interior

Staff

Mark Hutchins

Lead

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