Rig Workers Get Whistleblower Protections in House Measure After BP Spill

The House passed legislation that would protect oil-rig workers who report health or safety concerns from retaliation by their employers.

The measure, a response to BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, passed 315-93. The House today is debating a second bill that would rewrite deep-water drilling rules and tighten safety and environmental standards.

The Gulf spill began April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which BP leased from Transocean Ltd., exploded and caught fire, killing 11 workers and causing it to sink. The well gushed from 35,000 barrels to 60,000 barrels of oil a day before the leak was stopped on July 15.

Investigations into the accident found that workers on the rig had worried about drilling operations in the days leading up to the blast, said Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee’s energy and environment panel.

“We have heard that the workers aboard the rig had safety concerns, but in the end they were powerless to stop the cascading string of bad decisions by BP that led to the disaster,” Markey said during debate. “We are putting in place state of the art protections for oil and gas workers who are retaliated against because they raise safety concerns.”

The bill prevents companies from firing employees who report safety violations and allows employees to appeal perceived retaliation to the Labor secretary.

The bill is H.R. 5851.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.

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