"WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has completed its plan to roll back major offshore-drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which was established after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico and regulates offshore oil and gas drilling, has finalized a proposal for loosening the regulations as part of President Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and encourage domestic energy production.

The rules “created potentially unduly burdensome requirements for oil and natural gas production operators on the Outer Continental Shelf, without meaningfully increasing safety of the workers or protection of the environment,” says the new 176-page rule, which is scheduled in the coming days to be published in the Federal Register, before becoming the administration’s final policy."

Coral Davenport reports for the New York Times September 27, 2018. [2]