WASHINGTON – President Trump today proposed a $204.0 million Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). The proposed budget fully supports BSEE’s efforts to facilitate safe and environmentally sustainable energy development while ensuring robust energy production from the Nation’s offshore energy resources on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.
The FY 2021 budget request of $204.0 million is comprised of $129.3 million in direct appropriated funds and $74.6 million in revenue collected from rental receipts, cost recovery, and inspection fees. This $74.6 million in revenue accounts for 36.6 percent of the requested budget.
“President Trump’s 2021 budget request for the Department is about investing in our people and public lands and waters," said Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt. "He is committed to the mission of conservation and creating more public access for Americans to fully enjoy our national treasures and landscapes. This budget is a critical step in the right direction and provides a path to restore commonsense in our budgeting process.”
“In addition to a strong regulatory structure, BSEE is driving safety performance and environmental stewardship improvements beyond regulations through innovation and collaboration, while at the same time supporting robust energy production on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf,” said Director Scott Angelle. “As the Administration pursues
energy security consistent with the President’s Executive Order 13795 ‘Implementing an America First Offshore Energy Strategy,’ BSEE continues to build on efforts to advance its ‘We Can Do It All’ approach by implementing key change management initiatives. President Trump’s proposed FY 2021 budget continues to support BSEE in its mission to oversee safe, environmentally sustainable and robust offshore energy production from both conventional and renewable natural resources.”
The FY 2021 budget supports the following priorities:
- Risk Based Inspection Program: Using data and trend analysis to identify higher-risk operations and facilities, BSEE focuses inspection resources on these targets as a supplement to BSEE’s existing schedule of inspections on production facilities and active drilling operations. This inspection protocol was implemented in 2018. This systematic approach led to performance-based risk inspections on 67 facilities in 2018, resulting in two safety alerts issued and 19 safety recommendations. In 2019, BSEE conducted performance-based risk inspection on 57 facilities, resulting in two safety alerts issued and 20 safety recommendations.
- SPEAR Program (Safety Performance Enhanced by Analytical Review): The SPEAR Program represents a step-change to improve safety performance using data analytics to establish a world class approach to analyzing and communicating critical data and information throughout BSEE and to external stakeholders.
- Communicating Directly to Front-Lines (BSEE!SAFE): This text notification system, launched in May 2019, is a first-of-its-kind direct communication between a safety regulator and front-line workers. BSEE has used the service to send 37 safety alerts and bulletins to offshore workers, via more than 51,470 text messages, sharing lessons learned and recommendations from incidents and near misses. BSEE is the only safety regulator in the world delivering critical safety information directly to several thousand workers through text messaging.
- Regulatory Reform Effort: BSEE believes in smart regulations that lead to risk reduction without unnecessarily encumbering energy production, constraining economic growth or preventing job creation. As directed by Executive and Secretarial Orders, BSEE undertook a review of the Production Safety Systems Rule and the Well Control Rule with a view toward the policy direction of reducing regulatory burden without sacrificing safety.
- Information Sharing: BSEE has worked to enhance safety by increasing information sharing between the Bureau and the industry. The number of Safety Alerts and Safety Bulletins issued by BSEE rose 529% from 2016 to 2019 demonstrating BSEE’s commitment to proactively analyzing information and sharing knowledge to reduce risk. The Administration also energized efforts to increase participation in the voluntary near-miss reporting program known as SafeOCS. Through a collaborative effort with stakeholders, where BSEE successfully demonstrated the benefits of this program, the administration has increased participation to include operators who account for 85 percent of OCS production by 2019.
“2019 was a stellar year for BSEE with many successes and seismic shifts in the Bureau,” said Angelle. “The President’s FY 2021 Budget for BSEE will allow the women and men of the Bureau to continue to make improvements ensuring we achieve our Nation’s goals of energy, economic, and national security without sacrificing safety.”
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) is the lead federal agency charged with improving safety and ensuring environmental protection related to the offshore energy industry, primarily oil and natural gas, on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Under President Trump, BSEE is conducting more inspections, increasing the number of safety initiatives, and ensuring more offshore oil and gas workers receive critical safety information.
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