GAO gives Angelle good grades for leadership
A U.S. General Accounting Office report cites leadership improvements at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement during Scott Angelle’s tenure.
Angelle, of Breaux Bridge, served from May 2017 to this January as the agency’s fourth director.
The Bureau was created in October 2011 in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Eleven people died and 17 were injured in the incident. About 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Prior to Angelle, the Bureau was cited as high risk by the GAO.
After Angelle departed, a March GAO biennial High-Risk Series Report; a Report to Congressional Committees removed BSEE from a high risk list.
“The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) made progress to address problems in the bureau’s investigative, environmental compliance, and enforcement capabilities, and implemented strategic initiatives to improve offshore oversight and internal management. Specifically, BSEE led a change management initiative, encompassing more than 180 actions, to reform offshore oil and gas oversight,” the report stated.
Angelle, 59, who has served as Louisiana lieutenant governor and on the Public Service Commission, issued a statement about the GAO report.
“Nearly four years after publication of the damning inherited 2017 GAO report, I am pleased GAO’s most recent robust review, recounted in its 2021 High Risk Report, concluded it was appropriate to remove the Restructuring of Offshore Oil and Gas Oversight segment because of BSEE’s progress addressing long-standing deficiencies.
“I salute the men and women of BSEE and the leadership of the United States Department of Interior who demonstrated a commitment to usher in positive change while embracing all three components of its mission; safety, environmental sustainability and conservation of resources. Without their contributions and dedication, achieving this ‘new era of offshore oil and gas oversight excellence’ would not have been possible.
“I further salute the men and women of the offshore oil and gas industry, who daily kiss their families goodbye, put on their hardhats and steel-toe boots, and set out to do the hard work of energizing America.
“With 1 in 6 barrels of America’s oil production coming from Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) operations, historic high OCS oil production in 2018 and 2019 generating billions in annual royalty income for the American people; it is critical that the nonpartisan GAO monitor and report to the American people as they have done today. U.S. offshore production is among the most environmentally-advantaged production anywhere in the world and today’s GAO’s report confirms its regulatory oversight has exponentially improved...”
Angelle spoke about the Bureau he headed and the energy industry.
“The most important thing from me and the reason I wanted to have this call is because I think it is important for America to have confidence in its regulators,” he said.
Angelle said he inherited a GAO report in 2017 that “made very clear they had tremendous concerns for the agency that I just took over.”
Angelle said, “I believe in the Abraham Lincoln philosophy that every organization takes on the personality of its leader.”
BSEE was given the Louisiana work ethic, he said. “We got people to buy in that we could do it all. That it wasn’t a choice, that we had three areas of our mission. We were going to be excellent in all three, not one of three and not two out of three, we were excellent in all three and one of them is safety and the other one was environmental sustainability and the other one was in robust production,” he said.
BSEE was born as part of a restructuring of oversight after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“I know in my heart that America needed to have confidence in the operations of this government in order to continue to allow this,” Angelle said. “I knew the workers needed to have confidence. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t occasionally a bad day because humans are humans.”
COVID-19 presented another challenge to offshore energy production and BSEE’s mission to inspect facilities.
Inspections were done in 2020 on about 1,300 facilities usually by ferrying inspectors by helicopter, he said.
“America owes a great deal of, I think, thanks to those public employees, those inspectors, who followed the protocols while they were doing their job and followed some really solid CDC guidelines when they were off duty,” he said.
The inspectors worked from Alaska to California to the Gulf of Mexico and not one inspector contracted the virus as result of offshore travel, he said.
Angelle also cited the Gulf of Mexico operations as producing the second-most environmentally advantaged oil production in the world. (Denmark is first because its near-shore operations, he said.)
Gulf of Mexico production has a low rate of gas venting and flaring, which improves air quality.
No marine mammals or sea turtle deaths have been attributed to exploration and production since at least 2017, he said.
“The offshore oil and gas takes marine mammal fatalities and sea turtle fatalities very, very seriously,” he said.
Angelle stressed the need for a balanced approach in meeting the nation’s energy needs.
“I have a very big concern that soaring gas prices are coming to a zip code near you,” he said.
The nation needs to consider three Es — Energy, Environment and Economy.
As the U.S. expands to renewable sources it must do so in a way that doesn’t devastate the economy, he said. There is going to be transition in energy “but we need to be smart getting there.”
Angelle said there is a link from affordable energy to economic prosperity.