Big shift in US energy position raises disaster risks too: panel

Washington (Platts)--31Mar2013/943 am EDT/1343 GMT

 

Advances in technology that have made the US awash in oil and natural gas reserves also boost the risk of disaster, a panel of experts said in a television interview with Platts Energy Week airing Sunday in the US.

Industry and government regulators must work together to see that complex technology is managed safely, the panel said on the third anniversary airing of the program.

"We're pushing the envelope, so a lot of these frontier exploration plays, they're technically complex, (they) require...combined collaboration of industry and government that will make this work," Frank Verrastro, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.

The enormous resources that have been unlocked over the past five years or so have come at a price, including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, and several pipeline spills, the panel noted.

"It has caused a tremendous rethinking internally in the industry as well as by the regulators--increased compliance and oversight, increased review of existing regulations, updating existing regulations," Sheila Hollis, a partner in the law firm of Duane Morris, said. "I think definitely there's been a strong response both by regulators and regulated and I see that continuing."

While the immediate response to such disasters has been positive, the challenge going forward is "maintaining that focus and attention to those issues over the medium term and the long term," said Michael Bromwich, head of the Bromwich Group and the official brought in to reform US oversight of offshore drilling after Deepwater Horizon. "I think people's attention gets diverted, people start to become complacent again because there hasn't been a serious accident in a while and I think that the big risk." SHARING US ENERGY ABUNDANCE The energy resources unlocked by technology have completely changed the perception of the US as a net energy consumer to a country that is able to export resources, the panel said.

Harris described the rapid shift in the US energy outlook to the "surprise Powerball winner, who wakes up and realizes there is an abundance in the United States and we can share it with the rest of the world, too.

"Countries that desperately need clean-burning fuels like natural gas, we can get it to them now, we can be providers to the world as well as meet all our own needs," Harris said.

J. Bennett Johnston, the longtime US Senator from Louisiana and the first guest on Platts Energy Week, said that President Barack Obama will likely sidestep Congress and address climate change issues through regulation in his second term.

"I think that's the only way he can do it," Johnston said.

Johnston also said that US energy independence, which was considered "a pipe dream just a few years ago," is now "entirely achievable."

Platts Energy Week airs on Sundays in Washington on WUSA, a CBS affiliate, and in Houston on KUHT, a PBS affiliate, as well as on other PBS stations in the US. The program is also available on the web at www.plattsenergyweektv.com.

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com

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