The United States (U.S.) Minerals Management Service (MMS) has announced to the oil and gas industry that it is planning to develop rules for hoists and other small material handling equipment offshore.

The regulations would apply to fixed and floating offshore platforms and other drilling facilities in deep water known as OCS – the outer continental shelf – in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.

MMS shares jurisdiction for management of these operations with the U.S. Coast Guard. The regulations would only apply to OCS facilities that are under MMS’s sole jurisdiction.

Although pedestal cranes are subject to several different rules, MMS regulations on small-scale material handling operations are very general, according to Joseph Levine, MMS office of offshore regulatory programs senior engineer.

The current regulations read: “You must operate and maintain all other material-handling equipment in a manner that ensures safe operations and prevents pollution.” (30 CFR 250.108 (f)).

These regulations need to be reevaluated in light of the occurrence of incidents associated with these types of operations, according to Levine. MMS does not have any regulations for pipe handling operations.

Levine said that he “hoped” that an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the first step in making the new rules, would be published in the US Federal Register this summer.

The notice, currently under development, will include six different ways to regulate both material handling and pipe handling operations. The six different approaches are: specific prescriptive requirements, or a performance-based initiative, or a combination of both performance and prescriptive requirements, or the development of an industry standard specific to offshore oil and gas operations, or identification and adaptation of requirements and standards currently used by other offshore agencies, or keeping the situation the way it is.

It is too early in the process to say what the content of the standard might be, Levine said.

Once the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Notice is published, industry would likely have a 90-day comment period. “It’s nothing imminent. It would be a couple of years before any requirements would be final,” Levine said.

He announced the MMS’s plans at the International Association of Drilling Contractors’ offshore logistics conference in mid-April.