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DNR Secretary Angelle and Back to Work Coalition meet with new federal offshore leaders

BATON ROUGE – Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Scott Angelle and members of the Back to Work Coalition met with federal offshore energy regulators in Washington D.C. today as part of the continuing effort to restore a stable and efficient permit and plan approval process that allows continued development of the oil and natural gas resources that provide jobs and domestic energy.

Angelle and members of the Coalition, traveled to Washington D.C. to discuss outstanding issues in the federal permitting process with outgoing Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, and the heads of the two newly created agencies that have split the functions BOEMRE and replaced it as of October – Admiral James Watson, director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE); and Tommy Beaudreau , director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

In Tuesday’s meeting, Coalition members and regulators discussed the pace and predictability of approvals, the focus of regulatory efforts, and rule changes intended to clarify which practices are recommended and which are required.

Angelle said the meeting, the latest in an ongoing series the Coalition has held with the federal government regulatory leadership, served not only the purpose of moving discussion and action forward on regulatory processes, but was also an important opportunity for stakeholders in the industry and the new leadership of BSEE and BOEM to meet and speak face to face.

“While the job of restoring the pace of permitting and drilling is not yet done, we have made progress in the past year, and having leaders in both industry and the federal government who make time to connect and communicate has been critical to our successes so far,” Angelle said. “And those successes matter not only in the big picture issues such as the strength of our nation’s economy and energy security, but to the people and small businesses who look to this industry to earn their living.”

The most recent weekly count of running rigs in the federal waters off Louisiana’s coast had reached 34, the highest total since the moratorium was declared in late May 2010. That count had been in the 40s, and trending upward,  just prior to the spill – dropping as low as 11 in the weeks following declaration of the moratorium on deepwater drilling, and mired in low to mid 20s for most of the past year.

“Each one of those rigs employs 100 to 300 workers directly when actively drilling, and operators can spend anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million a day while drilling – and those dollars help support-industry companies make payroll, help families buy homes, and help provide customers with increased buying power for restaurants, retail stores and car dealerships,” Angelle said. “When we see rig activity slowed in the Gulf, that means hundreds of workers who are not earning their full potential, possibly having to compete with workers in other fields for jobs; that means small businesses that cannot afford to expand or make new hires; that means retail stores getting fewer customers with less spending power.”

The Back to Work Coalition, as part of the overall Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST) effort, serves as the primary voice for the energy industry and economic concerns of energy producing states along the Gulf of Mexico in working with the federal government to ensure that the process of approving permits, plans and operations for energy exploration in the federal waters of the Gulf is handled in a manner that ensures safety without stifling activity and investment.

GEST and the Coalition were created to mediate with the federal government on issues involved in the moratorium on drilling in the federal waters of the Gulf in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and have continued the effort as the pace of permit and exploration plan approvals has lagged what it was prior to 2010.

“We have seen that our efforts are paying off in the series of announcements of major new oil and natural gas reserve discoveries in the Gulf by exploration companies such as Anadarko, Chevron and ExxonMobil in the past several months, based on permits received through the efforts of the Back to Work Coalition,” Angelle said. “That provides us with all the motivation we could ever need to continue to work to bring rigs back to the Gulf, create new jobs and find American energy.”