As prepared for delivery
Testimony of Andy Radford, Senior Policy Advisor, American Petroleum Institute
Before the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
July 12, 2010
New Orleans, Louisiana
Chairman Reilly, Chairman Graham and members of the commission. I am Andy Radford, senior policy advisor for offshore issues at the American Petroleum Institute. API represents all sectors of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, which supports 9.2 million American jobs, including 170,000 in the Gulf of Mexico.
API welcomes the commission's efforts to understand the causes of the Gulf accident and help improve offshore safety. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the families of those lost in the accident and to all of the people in the Gulf.
Setting the bar higher on safety is the industry's number one priority. That is what the accident demands. It is also what you would expect from one of America’s most safety-focused businesses. To those not familiar with our nation's offshore industry except from the accident, the claim of a commitment to safety may be doubted, but if you lived and worked on the Gulf oil and natural gas rigs and platforms as tens of thousands do – or even visited one – I believe it would become apparent.
The men and women who work in the Gulf understand the challenges of working offshore and care about safety. They know it is in their best interest to follow their companies' safety procedures and ensure that equipment – including all safety equipment – is inspected, tested and fully operational. Extensive government regulation and frequent and comprehensive government inspections reinforce their strong safety ethic.
Yet despite this attention to safety – and an incident rate for our exploration and production sector that for years has been better than that of most other industries – the Macondo accident tragically happened. It compelled us to look at everything safety-related again – and to find every way possible to help reduce the risks of another catastrophic accident. And we are working hard to do that.
The industry has assembled experts to conduct top-to-bottom reviews of critical aspects of offshore development. Two industry task forces that are addressing issues related to offshore equipment and offshore operating practices have delivered their initial recommendations to the Interior Department and continue to try to identify areas for improvement. Two additional task forces – one addressing subsea spill containment and well control and the other addressing oil spill response – are at work and will develop recommendations in the weeks and months to come.
As an industry, we also will continue our long-standing programs establishing and improving industry best practices and technical standards. API has 240 standards, recommended practices and other technical documents that focus on exploration and production activities, covering everything from safety management planning to blowout preventers. We review and upgrade these documents on a regular basis. Over the long haul, these programs will help ensure that offshore practices and equipment that could affect safety continue to improve. Following one of the recommendations recently issued by our industry task force on offshore equipment, we have now begun work on a new API standard on deepwater well design.
Oil and natural gas companies are in the Gulf of Mexico to help provide the energy our nation needs to prosper and stay strong and secure. The Gulf provides a third of our domestically produced oil and natural gas, and deepwater accounts for 80 percent of Gulf oil and 45 percent of Gulf natural gas.
As we look ahead, it makes sense for America to produce as much of its oil and natural gas at home as it can. For one thing, energy development means jobs, something we always need, but never more so than now. It also means many billions of dollars a year paid to government by oil and natural gas companies in income and other taxes and in leasing bonuses and rentals and royalty payments.
Realistic projections show our nation will continue to rely on oil and natural gas for most of its energy for several more decades even with aggressive growth in alternative forms of energy. We can produce more of that oil and natural gas at home – including in the Gulf, where environmental standards are among the world's most stringent – or import more of it, benefitting industries abroad.
We stand ready to assist the commission any way we can. However, we also believe that, as you, we and others continue efforts to enhance safety, we must also work to get the Gulf deepwater industry – and the tens of thousands of people it employs – fully up and running again with as little delay as possible.
Thank you. That concludes my remarks.