OIL/TRUMP EXEC ORDER: “Just past the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Trump on Friday [4-28-17] directed the Interior Department to ‘reconsider’ several safety regulations on offshore drilling implemented after one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history.
Friday’s executive order was aimed at rolling back the Obama administration’s attempts to ban oil drilling off the southeastern Atlantic and Alaskan coasts. It would erase or narrow the boundaries of some federally-protected marine sanctuaries, opening them up to commercial fishing and oil drilling.
But Mr. Trump also took aim at regulations on oil-rig safety. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Interior Department implemented several new rules aimed at improving the safety of specific pieces of offshore drilling equipment that had failed during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and were found to have been responsible for the deadly BP oil rig explosion that caused that spill.”
-Coral Davenport, “Trump Orders Easing Safety Rules Implemented After Gulf Oil Spill,” The New York Times online, April 27, 2018