Gulf Drilling Should Resume on Case-by-Case Basis, Expert Says
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U.S. regulators could end a blanket ban on deep-water oil drilling by increasing oversight of troubled wells and improving safety industrywide, a California professor who studies catastrophes said in an interim report on the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Robert Bea, the University of California Berkeley engineering professor who studied the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion and the failure of New Orleans levees after Hurricane Katrina, said regulators should determine which drilling operations should be suspended “on a case-by-case basis” as the industry works to improve blowout prevention equipment, inspection procedures and worker training programs.