WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced Monday it is requiring environmental reviews for all new deepwater oil drilling.
That means an end, for now, to the exemptions that let BP drill its blown-out well in the Gulf with little scrutiny.
The announcement came in response to a report by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which found that decades-old data provided the basis for exempting BP's drilling permits from any extensive review.
The report comes in the midst of more than one oil spill, as the Kalamazoo River in Michigan faces extensive clean-up after nearly 1 million gallons spilled into its water when a pipeline ruptured.
Enbridge Inc., which owns that pipeline, hired about 80 companies, including wildlife rescuers and environmental response crews, and is settling about 800 damage claims with area residents.
The Calgary, Alberta-based company estimated that 820,000 gallons of oil leaked from the pipeline near Marshall, Mich., though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it could be more than 1 million gallons. Much of the oil went into the Kalamazoo River.
ederal authorities said cleanup is progressing well and the cause of the leak is under investigation.
The Interior Department said the ban on so-called "categorical exclusions" for deepwater drilling would be in place pending a full review.
"Our decision-making must be fully informed by an understanding of the potential environmental consequences of federal actions permitting offshore oil and gas development," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.
For now, new deepwater drilling is under a moratorium in the Gulf. Once that's lifted, though, Interior's new policy is likely to make it much more time-consuming for oil companies to move forward with new deepwater projects.
BP's ability to get environmental exemptions led to some of the harshest criticism in the wake of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Some 206 million gallons spilled into the Gulf before BP stopped the leak.
The report by the Council on Environmental Quality sheds new light on the granting of those categorical exclusions. The report says that the exclusions BP operated under were written in 1981 and 1986, long before the boom in deepwater drilling that was propelled by the development of new technologies.
The report also finds other problems with how the Minerals Management Service applied environmental laws in reviewing the BP project. For example, MMS did not consider the example of the disastrous 1979 Ixtoc spill in the Gulf — simply because the spill was not in U.S. waters.
MMS' successor agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation, is agreeing to recommendations to try to improve gas and oil drilling oversight, including pushing for more time to review exploration plans and performing more comprehensive site-specific environmental reviews.
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