[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8-S10]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      OFFSHORE DRILLING REGULATION

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, on December 28, just 3 days after 
Christmas, the Department of the Interior and this administration sent 
the oil industry a belated Christmas present. They published a proposal 
to release offshore drilling companies from sensible rules designed to 
prevent a tragedy like the one we experienced back in 2010, the 
Deepwater Horizon oilspill, when 11 people lost their lives and almost 
5 million barrels of oil were spilled as a result of a defective device 
called a blowout preventer. There were 5 million barrels of oil 
sloshing around in the Gulf of Mexico, much of which is still out there 
down at depths of 5,000 feet, where the actual well pipe came out a 
mile underneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
  Of course, we know the economic damage that did all up and down the 
Gulf of Mexico. The explosion was some 50 or 60 miles off of Louisiana, 
but the winds shifted and started blowing the oil to the east. It got 
as far east as Pensacola Beach, and those sugary white sands were 
covered up with black oil. The Associated Press and UPI photographs 
went around the world. The winds continued, and it went as far as the 
white sands of Destin. Tar balls floated as far east as the white sand 
beaches of Panama City Beach, and then the winds shifted and brought it 
back the other way. People all over the world, seeing the photographs, 
thought oil was on all the beaches of the gulf coast of Florida, and 
they did not come. The tourists did not come.
  Now, I haven't even spoken about the economic and environmental 
degradation that occurred throughout the entire gulf and the fishing 
industries. Of course, the administration has proposed to now do 
drilling off the east coast of the United States, including off the 
coast of the State of the Presiding Officer. A number of us have come 
together who don't think that matches with our tourism industry. It 
certainly doesn't match with regard to our fishing industries, but it 
also does not match with the U.S. Department of Defense's training and 
testing mission.
  If we look at the gulf coast off of Florida, the only place it is off 
limits in law is the largest testing and training area for the U.S. 
military in the world, but if you go up and down the Atlantic coast of 
the Eastern Seaboard, you will see training range after training range, 
and you get as far south as the Central East Coast of Florida and, lo 
and behold, is that area of protection for not only the U.S. Department 
of Defense but for NASA and other agencies. That is where we are 
rocketing our satellites into orbit, of which the first stages have to 
have a place to land. That is where, when we had the space shuttle--and 
soon we will be rocketing American astronauts to the International 
Space Station on American rockets. Many of the first stages will fall 
into the Atlantic Ocean below, just like the solid rocket boosters did 
on the space shuttle when it launched.
  So there are reasons not to have drilling platforms out there, but 
let's come back to the Deepwater Horizon oilspill. What happened was 
deep below the seabed, miles farther into the Earth's crust, pressure 
had built up and an explosion had occurred. The safety mechanism is 
right where the pipe comes out of the seabed and goes up 5 miles to the 
surface to deliver oil.
  The safety mechanism is a blowout preventer, which is like a huge set 
of pincers which comes through and cuts off the pipe. If that blowout 
preventer preventing the blowout of the well is defective--as it was in 
the BP oilspill, where 5 million barrels of oil spewed out 5 miles 
below the surface of the gulf into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and 
rendered the havoc and economic damage it did.
  In the turmoil and trauma that ensued, there was obviously a need in 
the Department of the Interior, in the Bureau of Safety, called BSEE, 
to change the rules to give additional safety mechanisms to make sure 
this wouldn't happen again. Lo and behold, there is now a change, and 
we are starting to see the first attempts at weakening those rules.
  Sometimes the issue of regulatory reform feels abstract or arbitrary. 
This is technical stuff, and it is dry, but the safety standards 
created after the Deepwater Horizon oilspill are not dull and boring. 
They are life or death. They were written specifically to make sure 
families, like those 11 who lost their loved ones, wouldn't have to be 
notified again that there was a preventable death.
  What are these new rules about? They are coming in on the blowout 
preventer, which is the system to control the flow of oil or to seal an 
oil well. A blowout preventer is what stands between the enormous 
pressure that builds up in the oil well pipe and the ocean around it. 
Its purpose is exactly what the name sounds like. It is to prevent the 
oil from blowing out into the sea uncontrollably.
  It took several months to finally get that well capped 5,000 feet 
below the surface of the water. These are massive pieces of equipment. 
The blowout preventer for Deepwater Horizon stood 57 feet tall and 
weighed over 400 tons. That is how big that thing is. Then there is a 
piece of the blowout preventer system called a shear ram--a device with 
two blades that seals off a well in an emergency, and that is what 
failed to fully close in the BP oilspill.

  What the Interior Department in this administration is trying to do 
is undo the updated standards for shear rams and blowout preventers, 
and it is trying to get rid of a required third party to certify the 
safety mechanisms.
  Obviously, after what we suffered, it is common sense to have those 
safety mechanisms, and it means that for a third party to ensure the 
safety mechanisms by certifying that they are in place--it means that 
somebody other than the oil company needs to make sure their safety 
equipment is in place and functioning properly.
  These rules require better training for workers, real-time monitoring 
of deepwater drilling operations, timely reporting of major problems 
with the equipment, and consistent testing and inspections to increase 
safety. These rules were also the product of a thorough and transparent 
discussion by scientists, engineers, industry representatives, agency 
officials, and the public.
  It took 6 years after the spill for the well control rule to be 
finalized. The Trump Interior Department wants to pull a bait and 
switch, reversing the safety measures and giving the public a mere 30 
days to review a highly technical rule. It took 6 years to develop this 
rule ensuring the safety devices, and now they have a rule to undo it, 
and they are going to give 30 days for comments. That is nothing more 
than a free pass to the oil and gas industry at the expense of everyone 
else, including folks who work on those rigs, who are going to have to 
suffer if there is another blowout. There are a lot of other things--
communities, marine life, your State's economy, my State's economy, the 
Gulf States' economies. It is totally misguided and reckless.
  Over the past year, President Trump has issued Executive orders cut 
straight from Big Oil's playbook. He has directed agencies to gut rules 
designed to protect the environment and the safety of workers if the 
rules interfered with an oil company's bottom line. That is what this 
one does. It saves them some $900 million. He directed Secretary Zinke 
to reconsider the well control rule, which was finalized in 2016. That 
rule stemmed directly from what we had learned in the investigation of 
the 2010 BP spill.
  By the way, the agency that issued this proposed rollback is called 
the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. It is separate now 
from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management--the agency that schedules 
lease sales in the Outer Continental Shelf.
  Before the 2010 spill, the folks who worked with the oil industry to 
auction acreage in the gulf were the same people who were in charge of 
inspecting the rigs later for compliance with the

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safety standards. Talk about a cozy relationship. That is why one of 
the first recommendations from the National Commission on the BP spill 
was to split those responsibilities into two different agencies--one 
that schedules lease sales and the other that does the safety. That was 
a very important step, both to clarify the mission of each agency and 
to restore public trust in offshore regulators. Yet over the summer, 
there were reports that the Trump administration wanted to recombine 
these two agencies. Only one stakeholder group would benefit from that, 
and you can bet what it is. It is not the consumers. It is not the 
tourists. It is not the scientists. It is not the environmentalists. It 
is the oil industry.
  Now the Trump administration wants to smack down more recommendations 
from that investigation. From marine biologists to chambers of 
commerce, I can tell you, the people in Florida understand how 
important it is to keep drilling off the coast and, where there is 
drilling, to make sure the safety mechanisms that were corrected after 
the BP spill stay in place. But that is not what is happening right 
here in Washington.
  When the Interior Department released this revised rule last week, my 
colleague, a Republican Congressman from Sarasota, FL, said ``It would 
be a huge mistake to weaken these safety regulations'' and that if the 
Interior Department doesn't rescind the proposal, Congress should 
intervene and codify the rules permanently.
  He is right, and I agree with Congressman Buchanan, my colleague in 
the Florida delegation who has an ``R'' behind his name. That is why I 
plan to subject this misguided rule to the Congressional Review Act.
  The Congressional Review Act was once an option of last resort. It 
was meant to ensure that Congress could override the administration if 
a rule were widely opposed. In most cases, the Congressional Review Act 
wasn't necessary because if Congress opposed a rule strongly enough, 
there was enough consensus to pass a law to fix it.
  At the beginning of this Congress, the CRA was a favorite tool of the 
Republicans who wanted to take a sledgehammer to the Obama 
administration's legacy through the rules that they had enacted. In 
2017, the Senate took 17 votes on CRA resolutions of disapproval on 
everything from bear hunting in the National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska 
to drug testing of unemployment benefit recipients.
  I think this dangerous proposal from the Interior Department deserves 
the same level of attention. This proposal is open to public comment 
until January 29. You are not going to get 6 years this time. You will 
get only 30 days, and it ends January 29. I hope the public understands 
that and starts registering some complaints.
  I hope, during that time, every Floridian remembers what happened to 
us when the beaches of Pensacola were blackened with tar and oil and we 
lost a whole season of our guests--tourists who come to this 
extraordinary State of natural environment, the beautiful Florida 
beaches. I hope that every Floridian will remember--whether you were a 
hotelier, a restauranteur, whether you had the dry cleaners, whether 
you had the taxi services--when you got hit in your pocketbook; I hope 
every American who rightly has an interest in protecting our beaches, 
our oceans, our marine life, decides to write in and complain to 
Secretary Zinke exactly what he is putting at risk with this proposal.
  The Interior Department claims the revised proposal will lessen 
``unnecessary regulatory burdens''--those are their words--on the oil 
and gas industry, saving these businesses money. It is estimated it 
will save $900-some million for the oil industry. What about all the 
other businesses that will be hurt by a spill if that blowout preventer 
doesn't cut that pipe in two and seal off the well, which was the 
lesson learned from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill?
  Do we want to go back and weaken these rules? The BP spill devastated 
my State's economy, and 11 people lost their lives. Louisiana's bayous 
were inundated with gooey oil.
  I talked to two professors, researchers at Louisiana State 
University, LSU. They compared the critters that had developed in the 
bayous where the oil went into the bayous--the same kind of critter, a 
little fish that is about that big. Their progeny were stunning; they 
were mentally deformed. They could not act like normal killifish. It is 
a little fish about that big. They compared it to the bays and the 
bayous where those killifish hatched and grew in waters without oil 
sloshing around in those waters. For 87 days, 5 million barrels of oil 
gushed.
  I bet folks don't even realize there is a spill that is happening 
right now. As a matter of fact, it has been leaking for 13 years. In 
2004, Hurricane Ivan toppled an offshore drilling platform owned by 
Taylor Energy. Because of the way the platform slid, several of the 
wells were buried and have yet to be plugged.
  We all know it is not a question of if there will be another spill 
but when--and, oh, by the way, the one that has been going on since 
2004. How catastrophic will the next one be? Is it going to be off of 
the Carolinas? Is it going to be off of Virginia, with all of our 
military fleet in Norfolk? Is it going to be off of Jacksonville and 
Mayport, as well as the subbase for our Trident submarines? Is it going 
to be off of Canaveral, where our commercial government rockets are 
launched into space, dropping first stages, and where the testing for 
the Trident submarine that is based in Georgia is done, with the 
telemetry on the Air Force Eastern Test Range? That is why more than 
41,000 businesses on the Atlantic coast have expressed opposition to 
drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, and that is why NASA doesn't want 
drilling anywhere near the Kennedy Space Center. That is why the 
Department of Defense has said, time and again, that we should protect 
and extend the moratorium on drilling in the eastern gulf.

  In 2006, bipartisan Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida, 
and I passed a moratorium for the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off of 
Florida, because of the military as well as all of the environmental 
things I have talked about.
  Just at the end of last year, the Air Force came to us. It wants to 
put $60 million of new improvements for exquisite telemetry, as we are 
testing some of our most sophisticated weapons systems in the gulf 
testing range, which is the Gulf of Mexico, off of Florida, but they 
don't want to make that investment of $60 million to upgrade all of the 
telemetry unless they have the assurance it is going to be off limits 
to oil drilling, not just until 2022, which is in the law, but extended 
another 5 years until 2027.
  We cannot get it done. This Senator tried to get it into the Defense 
bill--an appropriate place. The Acting President pro tempore serves on 
that distinguished committee, the Armed Services Committee, which is 
led by John McCain. We couldn't get it done because of oil interests 
not wanting to give the Air Force the security that its $60 million 
investment on advanced telemetry would be protected for not 5 years 
from now but 10 years from now.
  The only reason the administration wants to take the time to write a 
new one is, the oil industry wants it to open up a whole lot more 
acreage to drilling and not just in the gulf; it wants the entire Outer 
Continental Shelf of the United States--on the west coast and from New 
Jersey south, as one goes down the States, including the ones I have 
already mentioned in the Southeastern United States--Virginia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida.
  I don't think we should expose even 1 acre of Federal waters to 
drilling until we have strong safety standards in place to protect 
against another spill, to protect the workers from losing their lives 
ever again, to protect the environment, to protect the coastal 
economies that are so dependent on the beautiful beaches, and to 
protect the national security interests of our testing and training 
ranges.
  It took 6 years to finalize these rules, and now, in a matter of 30 
days, comments are out there to undo these rules. That shouldn't 
happen. Will other voices in the Senate speak up? It is happening right 
underneath our noses.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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