President Trump continues to lift restrictions on the oil and gas industry which is upsetting environmentalists but leaving supporters looking for good times in the oil patch.
The loosening on regulations based on rules written following the 2010 BP oil spill may make the Gulf of Mexico more attractive to those looking to establish offshore rigs. Tulane Energy Institute Professor Eric Smith says among those rules was a requirement to break down blowout preventers after every drilling program. Smith believes some of the rules were too harsh.
''For example, independent third party inspectors to certify equipment rather than having it only certified by federal inspectors,'' Smith said.
Smith says the new rules will reduce the number of times a rig has to open up a blowout preventer for inspection, as well as expands who can conduct the inspections when they take place.
''You had very few industry people on the panels and you had a lot of people who were upset and they produced rules that were unworkable,'' said Smith.
Smith describes the rules set following the oil spoil as overly harsh and now that they’ve been loosened, it opens the Gulf of Mexico to being more competitive with other deep water drilling sites around the world.