US offshore drilling regulator Michael Bromwich has for weeks tried to refute what he describes as politically motivated claims that his agency is stalling permits to keep oil companies out of the Gulf of Mexico.
A Louisiana businessman, he said, even approached him wanting to know why regulators in Washington "had fully compliant permit applications sitting on our desks awaiting approval."
"He seemed surprised when I told him that our district offices in the Gulf of Mexico have that job and that I have no role in making decisions on individual permits," Bromwich said recently.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote next week on a Republican proposal to force Bromwich's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to act quicker. The "Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act" would impose a 30-day deadline for processing applications to drill.
Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, called it the push regulators need.
"Nothing sharpens your focus better than a deadline," said Luthi, who led the former Minerals Management Service from 2007 to 2009. "What's important to industry is some sense of predictability and reliability, whether that be 15 days, 30 days or 45 days."
Others in the industry said another deadline would not accelerate permits.
"They're not getting to the root issue," said Bud Danenberger, an offshore drilling expert and former chief of MMS's inspection and enforcement programs. "They're just creating artificial deadlines."
RETURNING APPLICATIONS RESTARTS THE CLOCK
The agency already faces a 30-day window for acting on exploration plans -- the more complex filings that precede drilling permits -- and has struggled for a number of reasons to meet that deadline.
"Our people aren't interested in delaying," Bromwich said on his last visit to Capitol Hill in March. "They're interested in getting the work done: reviewing the exploration plans, doing the environmental assessments, approving exploration plans and approving permits, if they meet all the requirements."
Regulators have approved a single exploration plan since the Macondo disaster, for Shell to drill in the Auger field about 130 miles offshore Louisiana. Bromwich said the agency only met the deadline because Shell voluntarily resubmitted the application, which restarted the 30-day clock.
Of four other exploration plans that have gotten far enough in the process to be "deemed submitted," three have been kicked back with revisions. On Thursday, for example, Statoil amended its application on what would have been the 28th day of review, and BHP Billiton amended its plan on the 27th day.
Luthi said that when he was at MMS, staffers made every effort to meet the deadline. But sometimes they had no other option but to bounce the applications back at the last minute with new questions.
David Pettit, senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Congress must set realistic permitting windows, otherwise the back-and-forth threatens the agency's legitimacy.
"The feds have resorted to, I don't want to say trickery, but if you have 30 days to do something and then on the 30th day you send the application back and say, 'There's a couple more things we want to know and there's commas in the wrong places,' that starts the clock another 30," he said.
Bromwich said he has told staffers not to flip exploration plans back just to restart the clock.
"I want everyone to understand how long it takes," he said. "If that's 40 days or 50 days or 60 days or in some instances because of workload 70 days, that's what we should show. We shouldn't artificially be sending the plans back so we make the 30-day."
INDUSTRY ASKS FOR CERTAINTY TO SCHEDULE RIGS
Erik Milito, upstream director at the American Petroleum Institute, said companies have become frustrated with regulators' questions cropping up in the fifth or sixth round when they could have been asked at the outset. He said the industry needs a level of certainty that applications will be reviewed in a reasonable amount of time so that companies can line up rigs and other contracts ahead of drilling.
"We're not looking for a rubber stamping of plans or permits," he said.
Danenberger said regulators should be able to turn around applications for permits to drill much quicker than the more-involved exploration plans.
"Thirty days is quite a bit of time to do an APD," he said. "But the way things are moving these days, every permit is like the Magna Carta."
