The Interior Department today announced that its Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Energy entered into a cooperative agreement with Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station to manage the Ocean Energy Safety Institute.
The Institute was established in 2011 to provide policy advice to the Secretary of the Interior on issues related to ocean energy safety including drilling and workplace safety, well intervention and containment, and oil spill response.
Among other things, Texas A&M will provide input on annual objectives, facilitate R&D related to offshore oil, natural gas, wind, and marine hydrokinetic energy, implement operational improvements in offshore drilling safety, and increase environmental protection, blowout containment, and oil spill prevention and response.
Principal Deputy Asst. Interior Sec. for Land and Minerals Management Laura Daniel-Davis called the Institute “an important example of how cooperative efforts between academia, government, industry, and other non-governmental organizations can be used to improve both worker safety and environmental sustainability,” while Acting Asst. Energy Sec. for Fossil Energy Jennifer Wilcox said that the collaboration “will provide for cooperative research between academia, government, and industry” and “work to…mitigate offshore environmental risks by improving technologies to prevent oil spills while developing new offshore renewable energy solutions.”
