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Proposals for the first EU-wide laws on oil platform safety and standards are likely early next year, the European Commission has said.
The move follows a review of the existing rules which the commission said revealed the need for an overhaul, including “more coherent” legislation to guarantee the highest safety standards.
The review, part of a report titled Facing the challenge of the safety of offshore oil and gas activities published last week, suggests tighter controls on granting drilling permits, independent supervision of oil platforms and new technical criteria for safety controls.
That would include the kind of “blow-up preventer” believed to have failed in the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
EU energy commissioner Gunter Oettinger said: “Safety is non-negotiable. We have to make sure that a disaster similar to the one in the Gulf of Mexico will never happen in European waters. This is why we propose that best practices already existing in Europe will become the standard throughout the EU”.
His earlier call for a moratorium on all new drilling for oil in European waters has been ditched after disagreements with other commissioners and staunch opposition from the British government.
The report says: “Although safety standards in the EU industry are generally high, the rules often vary from company to company and legislation differs from one member state to another.”
Some safety issues on oil platforms come under existing EU rules but a coherent legal framework is required.
Oil platforms are currently controlled by national authorities but the commission wants national supervisory efforts to be evaluated by independent experts.
The report says formal proposals for new laws could be tabled early next year, covering areas such as prevention of accidents, disaster responses and financial liability.
The commission is expected to propose that new drilling licences will only be granted subject to new agreements on company contingency plans and proof that the company can pay for environmental damage.
Companies are likely to be required to agree to clean up any oil spills and rectify environmental damage in a zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from the coast.
Malcolm Webb, Oil & Gas UK’s chief executive, said it was “deeply worrying” that the commission wanted to centralise safety regulation. “This would undermine the highly sophisticated regulatory regimes,” he said.
Greenpeace EU transport policy adviser Franziska Achterberg said: “Deepwater drilling should be banned. We simply don’t need it if we boost fuel efficiency.”