Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle ran an interesting article on deepwater drilling reform a year after the Gulf's BP disaster that killed 11 and injured 17 drilling vessel workers. It said that Congress still hasn't agreed on how to hold BP liable and has stalled on most of the drilling safety reform ideas it had in the wake of the spill. What has been decided, though, is that the federal law currently in place, putting a $75 million limit on companies' liability for offshore spills, will not do.

According to the article, in the months following the deepwater drilling accident, Congress moved quickly to approve laws to revamp and tighten the government's control of offshore drilling. The House voted to remove the liability limit for spills, and to make standards for wells and emergency equipment stricter. However, that is where it stopped.

In fact, the chair of the United States Arctic Research Commission and a presidentially-appointed investigator of the Gulf oil well explosion and spill said that the drilling industry and Federal agencies are moving much faster than Congress is. Another presidentially-appointed investigator added that Congress should take responsibility for addressing these issues so that as drilling continues, it's done as safely as possible.

As it currently stands, most of the laws regulating the oil drilling industry were put into place in 1989, shortly after the Alaskan Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Houston Chronicle reported. While these 21-year-old laws do force companies to pay all costs associated with offshore oil spill cleanup, there is a $75 million cap on liability for economic damages.

And even though BP has said that it will not use the cap as a defense, experts guess that this may not be the case if another spill happens by a company with less money.

One problem is that members of Congress cannot agree on what the cap should be, if there is one at all. In fact, two Senators from New Jersey have argued that there should be no cap and damages should be limitless. On the other hand, advocates for oil and gas companies argue that this will result in a monopoly on offshore drilling because smaller companies will not be willing to take such risks.

If you have been impacted by the Gulf Coast drilling accident and oil spill, contact your state's representatives and tell them what you think should be done to make offshore drilling safer.

Source: Houston Chronicle, "Lawmakers struggle with spill liability," Jennifer A. Dlouhy, 4/17/2011.