The Interior Department still needs to firm up its plans for dealing with an accident similar to what occurred in the Gulf of Mexico two summers ago, the Government Accountability Office says in a report released today by congressional Democrats.

Technological advances have been made since the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, says the report, which is dated February 2012. But the watchdog agency is casting doubt on how well oil and gas companies and their regulators could actually respond if a similar well blowout were to happen again -- especially in the Arctic, where the first offshore drilling is set to begin this summer.

Just two days ago, the Obama administration signed off on Royal Dutch Shell PLC's plan for preventing a spill in the remote Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northern coast. The company, which also had its plan for the Chukchi Sea approved last month, says it will keep a capping stack on a nearby icebreaking vessel for the possibility of a blowout (Greenwire, March 28).

But the conditions are very different in the Beaufort and Chukchi than in the Gulf of Mexico, where 97 percent of the oil and gas production in federal waters occurs. Surface ice and limited infrastructure in the Arctic could lead to delays in bringing personnel and equipment to the spill site, GAO says.

"Oil and gas exploration and production off the coast of Alaska is likely to encounter environmental and logistical risks that differ from those in the Gulf of Mexico because of the region's cold and icy conditions -- factors that would also likely affect the response to a well blowout," the report cautions.

The industry has started two new organizations -- the Marine Well Containment Co. and the Helix Well Containment Group -- to make more effective equipment and services available to drillers in the event of a well blowout.

Both of the groups told investigators they are ready to provide drillers with capping stacks, similar to the one that eventually stanched the flow of oil from BP PLC's Macondo well, if they are needed.

Interior ran a pair of spill drills in September and December to test whether drillers could quickly notify the authorities of a spill and gather the needed equipment, but GAO says that is not enough.

"Interior has not tested most operators' ability to respond to a subsea blowout, and has not established a time frame to incorporate these tests," the report says. "Until Interior sets a time frame for incorporating well containment scenarios into unannounced spill drills, there is limited assurance that operators are prepared to respond to a subsea blowout."

The industry sees Arctic drilling as the next big source of U.S. oil and gas. Together, the Beaufort and Chukchi could hold as much as 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey -- more than the 17 billion barrels of oil that Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil fields produced over the past three decades.

California Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and an opponent of Arctic drilling, said the report shows the Interior Department needs to move more aggressively on safety.

"GAO found we currently have just 'limited assurance' that oil companies can stop offshore well blowouts," he said in a statement. "Two years after the disaster in the Gulf, that's not good enough. The risks are especially high in Alaska because of the unique environmental and logistical problems."

Click here to read the report.