BSEE Director Brian Salerno has requested that the agency address items of immediate concern over the next 45 days and address more complex matters over the next 6 months.

Salerno says, “There are similarities between this incident and other blowouts that have occurred in recent years on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS); in particular this blowout was due in part to the crew’s inability to identify critical well control indicators and also to the failure of critical equipment to operate in an emergency.”

Salerno specifically says that additional work is required to, among other things, determine whether additional blowout preventer requirements are necessary and whether the proposed requirements in the draft well control rule are sufficient, as well as whether additional training requirements and more thorough well control procedures would be of benefit.