Good morning! On behalf of the United States Department of the Interior, I want to thank Taf Powell and his staff in the Offshore Safety Division of HSE for their outstanding efforts in organizing this conference. The DOI considers Taf to be a true innovator and outstanding leader on safety management and regulatory issues.

I also want to thank Magne Ognedal of Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority for the excellent work of the Program Committee. I understand that Magne is known as "Mr. Safety," not only in Norway, but worldwide, for his leadership and vision on offshore safety issues. We have benefited greatly from working with Taf, Magne, and their outstanding staffs.

It is wonderful to see people from so many countries assembled here. There is great value in organizations that allow those with similar responsibilities to get together and share their experiences.

The U.S. Interior Department is different from that of most other countries. Other Interior Departments have security and police powers. The U.S. Interior Department is basically a natural resources department. One bureau within my department is the Minerals Management Service, which is responsible for offshore oil and natural gas leasing and regulation.

The magnitude and importance of global offshore oil and gas operations continues to grow. Offshore production is forecast to increase from 39 million barrels oil equivalent (boe) per day in 2004 to 55 million boe by 2015. From providing around 34 per cent of global oil production and 28 per cent of global gas production in 2004, offshore oil and gas are forecast to provide 39 per cent and 34 per cent respectively by 2015.

In other words, offshore's share of the world oil and natural gas markets will grow by 5 percentage points in the next 10 years.

Every continent, except Antarctica, is an energy producer. Some 70 nations have offshore oil and gas programs. Worldwide there are more than 8,000 platforms, and more than 150,000 kilometers of offshore pipelines.

There are many countries and cultures represented here, yet we share similar challenges. Our earth and environment are connected in countless ways.

As land management and regulatory agencies, we have important roles in establishing clear and common-sense rules, in ensuring compliance, and in measuring performance.

We regulate operations that are essential to world commerce and our respective economies. We must acknowledge the importance of offshore production without compromising our regulatory responsibilities.

Future growth and future prosperity depend on developing new sources of energy. As the standard of living increases in country after country, more people want more gasoline for their automobiles. In some places, the growth is dramatic.

For example, I visited the Guangzhou and other cities in southern China about 20 years ago. A lot of people commuted to work by bus, but even more rode bicycles. You could stand on a street corner and see thousands of people, all riding their bicycles.

A decade later, I went back. The economic growth was phenomenal. The bicycles had been replaced by motorcycles. Now, as China's middle class grows, automobiles are replacing motorcycles.

All around the world, more airplane travel serves both businesses and personal recreation interests as the world becomes more interconnected. Fuel prices play a major role in the future of the airline industry.

We are finding more ways to create a huge variety of products made from plastics and other synthetic materials. Natural gas is a vial raw material for many of those products. Everything from the furniture in our homes, to the clothing we wear, to the interiors of our cars, to the containers holding our food originates with natural gas.

More people must be fed from the same land base that fed previous generations, so we need more fertilizers - which are often made from natural gas.

To improve air quality, electricity generation has often replaced coal with natural gas fired power plants.

Wherever we look, we see that the oil and natural gas produced are increasingly important.

Certainly we in the U.S. government want to develop more alternative energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and nuclear. We strive for less-polluting renewable energy. Someday the world may move beyond the demand for fossil fuels.

But in the near term, an increase in oil and natural gas production is what helps fuel economic growth around the world. Consequently, every regulator here plays a significant role in determining economic growth in each of your nations.

We regulate an industry whose technical achievements rival those of the world's space programs. The offshore industry has blurred the distinction between ships and platforms, taught us that we must think of wells as horizontal as well as vertical, and reminded us that the ocean is our greatest and least explored frontier.

We must ensure that this technology is effectively employed, and that the safety implications have been fully considered.

Although high-tech, the offshore industry is dependent on large structures and heavy equipment. This merger of the old and new economies challenges both operators and regulators.

Operators and contractors must address the human and organizational factors that are critical to safety achievement. Accidents are not mere matters of choice - they happen for a reason. By understanding the root causes of these incidents, we can prevent their recurrence.

Uncertainty is a way of life to offshore producers and their contractors. When your target is deep beneath the earth's surface, there are many unknowns, and no two wells are the same. The risks associated with these uncertainties must be effectively managed.

As the tragic tsunami in the Indian Ocean demonstrated, historical information is not always a good predictor of future events. Some unexpected events can occur on a devastating scale.

While we cannot avoid every disaster, we must anticipate and prepare for the unexpected.

For example, a disaster was avoided last fall when Hurricane Ivan smashed through the Gulf of Mexico. Onshore, it caused widespread damage to homes and businesses. People were amazed to find out how well the offshore industry weathered the storm, which came directly through one of the largest concentrations of offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

While hammering offshore production platforms, Ivan was a Category 4 storm. It had sustained winds near 140 miles an hour, and wind gusts even stronger.

Many production platforms were damaged by the storm. Several large structures were lost to rogue waves or mudslides. Much work was disrupted. But Ivan did not cause the environmental catastrophe that it could have.

The catastrophe was averted for a reason. Wise minds foresaw storms like Ivan; calloused hands built tough platforms to withstand them; shut-off valves worked as designed. As a result, the environmental damage was surprisingly small. Only some minor spillage occurred from broken pipelines and damaged platforms.

Similar results have been seen at production platforms in the North Sea. They stand as towers of strength and safety against the repeated lashings of terrible storms. The industry has learned from storms around the world, and we can all draw from these learning experiences.

In the US, where offshore oil and gas development is administered by DOI, 30 percent of our oil production and 23 percent of our natural gas production is from offshore facilities in Federal waters. This involves 4,000 platforms, 50,000 kilometers of pipeline, and more than 100 mobile drilling units operating at any one time.

In the Gulf of Mexico, technological advances have opened up prolific deepwater fields. Wells have been drilled in water depths greater than 3,000 meters and are producing in 2,300 meters of water. Encouraging discoveries have accelerated the pace of exploration and development in deepwater where wells produce at rates that are one to two orders of magnitude higher than typical shelf wells.

In fact, 62 percent of the total oil production in the US Gulf of Mexico is now from deepwater facilities in water depths greater than 305 meters (1000').

Deep water is, of course, a relative term. 30 years ago, our deepest production was in 114 meters of water. Even today, 20 meters deep of water is considered very deep in the ice conditions of the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska.

The environment will continue to challenge us - be it hurricane conditions and high-currents in the Gulf of Mexico, seismic risks in the Pacific, ice conditions in the arctic or high temperatures and pressures deep beneath the earth's surface.

Outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance are critical to the success of our respective oil and gas programs. And to date the record of the offshore industry has been impressive. A thirty year record of studies by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly documented the minimal contribution of oil into the marine environment from offshore production facilities.

The latest report, in 2002, indicated that the offshore industry annually accounted for only about 4 percent of the oil that is released into the ocean environment. When you compare this to the billions of barrels produced each year from offshore facilities this amounts to less than one one-thousandth of the total.

Far more comes from natural petroleum seeps. In fact, the accidental spills of a full year equal only three days of natural seeps.

To continue this admirable record, our goal is to use the "best available and safest technologies." We must therefore continue to investigate technology, practices, and procedures that might further reduce risks to offshore workers and the environment. In that regard, our offshore program has benefited tremendously from our international research partnerships.

For the past 25 years, we have worked with international agencies on offshore safety research projects. One-fourth of our 529 safety and pollution prevention projects have involved international partners or contractors.

Participating countries have included Canada, Norway, the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Japan, Russia, Australia, and South Korea. This cooperation has enabled us to leverage our research funds and to have access to the world's leading technical specialists.

We and our international partners have also co-sponsored 35 International Workshops on topics such as decommissioning, pipeline safety, offshore structures, drilling procedures, ice mechanics, new materials, and human factors.

We have had the opportunity to share our own research facilities such as those at the Offshore Technology Research Center at Texas A&M University and the National Spill Response Test Center, and to make use of outstanding facilities abroad.

Thanks largely to the efforts of our colleagues with the Petroleum Safety Authority in Norway, there is now a website that describes our cooperative and independent research. The site has a unique search engine that provides access to research projected conducted by any of the participating agencies and is an outstanding resource.

Since 1994, we have worked closely with an informal coalition of offshore safety regulators known as the International Regulators Forum. The IRF has developed into an outstanding network for our safety and regulatory personnel.

" We have shared accident data, investigative reports, regulations, guidance documents, and personnel.
" We have developed a set of common performance measures that will enable us to better assess the effectiveness of our respective regulatory programs.
" We have sought common solutions to common problems such as the high number of crane and lifting incidents.
" We have initiated an awards program to recognize international leadership on offshore safety issues.

Our international partners also help us answer the tough questions about our regulatory program. Do we have a logical regulatory framework? Are our regulations understandable? Are any requirements unnecessary or duplicative? Are there better or more cost-effective means of achieving these results?

The idea for this conference emanated from the International Regulators Forum.

The expanded international involvement helps advance our goals of improved international consistency, better cooperation with industry and public interest groups, and more comprehensive operations, performance, and incident data.

We are very pleased to see the interest of industry and their support for this conference. Our success as land managers and regulators is dependent on their commitment.

Most companies know that safety management and environmental responsibility make good business sense as well as good social sense. The pacesetting companies in the oil and gas industry must be the leaders in ensuring that safety standards are not compromised, and in developing new standards for new technology and procedures.

Our job is to challenge these companies, to set goals, to administer regulations, to penalize those who cut corners, and to recognize those who have demonstrated outstanding safety performance. Each year, the MMS takes great pride in recognizing outstanding safety performers at an awards program in Houston.

Last year's event was attended by more than 600 industry leaders. It's important to take the time to recognize those companies who not only understand the message, but they live by it.

Even though corporations and countries compete with each other in the worldwide market, it's in everyone's interest to enhance safety, to learn from each other how to improve operating practices and how best to regulate.

International cooperation among regulators can also simplify the movement of personnel and equipment, and reduce operating costs. We should be able to agree on approaches that avoid duplication of regulatory and industry effort.

If personnel have demonstrated their proficiency to the satisfaction of our international regulatory partners, perhaps they do not need to be requalified in the United States. If equipment has been maintained in accordance with the standards of our partners, it is probably suitable for similar service in U.S. waters. We regulate an international industry, and should do with an international perspective.

Working together and learning from each other, we can accomplish a great deal. As safety is enhanced, so is the offshore industry. Workers and the environment are protected, and the economies of all countries gain benefits.

Thank you.