Only 62 federal inspectors oversee offshore drilling in U.S. waters

June 8, 2010 - PRLog -- ATLANTA, Ga. (June 7, 2010) - The Gulf of Mexico is populated by a tangled network of 3,500 oil-drilling platforms and more than 43,000 miles of pipelines between Texas and Alabama.
   U.S. government oversight of offshore drilling in the GoMex is currently the responsibility of 62 federal inspectors. The 62 Minerals Management Service (MMS) inspectors also monitor drilling off the U.S. East and West Coasts.
   Overall, MMS has 1,700 employees, and collects about $13 billion in royalties a year from the oil industry.
          Based on an admittedly lowball U.S. government estimate released in late May, the BP Macondo Well blowout in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico leaked about 500,000-800,000 barrels of oil through May. That compares with about 3.5 million barrels spilled offshore Mexico over nine months in 1979 by the Pemex-operated Ixtoc well when it blew out.
         In an effort to shed light on some of the most common misperceptions about the BP Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, and correct some urban legends, “Energy Pipeline News,” a daily newsletter published in Atlanta, Ga., by Anvil Publishers, has prepared an op-erd piece on key issues.
   The op-ed piece, which addresses fines which may be levied against BP,  likely litigation, why supertankers are not being used to clean up the spilled oil and other topics, is available at http://energypipelinenews.blogspot.com.


   About Energy Pipeline News: Energy Pipeline News is a daily and fortnightly (twice monthly) newsletter about oil, natural gas and petroleum products pipelines in the U.S. and abroad. It is published by Anvil Publishers, Inc., of Atlanta, Ga., in the USA.

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Anvil Publishers is an Atlanta-based company currently marketing $16.5 million in books and $8.5 million in literary properties. It publishes several newsletters, including Energy Pipeline News.