The Trump administration pointed to key offshore drilling safety regulations adopted in the wake of the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in its sweeping proposal to open up nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas development, only to turn around in the months since and work to roll back those very safeguards .

The controversial drilling plan , released in January as part of President Donald Trump s energy dominance agenda, would make available for oil and gas leasing roughly 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, including large swaths of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Interior Department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke , noted in the lengthy proposal that while offshore oil and gas production will never be totally risk-free, the agency has made, and is continuing to make, substantial reforms to improve the safety and reduce the possible adverse environmental impacts of those activities.

These changes, the Interior Department added, are designed to reduce the risk of another loss of well control [as happened in 2010] in our oceans, and enhance our collective ability to respond to such incidents.

The language is almost identical to whats found in the current five-year oil and gas leasing program, which was finalized by the Obama administration in November 2016 and which the Trump administration is now working to replace.

Elizabeth Johnson Klein, the Interior Departments associate deputy secretary under Obama, said the language first appeared in a draft of the current program, released in January 2015. She said it references the Well Control Rule and the Production Safety Systems Rule, two regulations that were under development back in early 2015 and are now on Trumps chopping block. The language also points to broader reform efforts that occurred after the Gulf spill, including the division of the Minerals Management Service , the scandal-plagued agency faced with the conflicting tasks of issuing leases and policing offshore drilling operations, into three new agencies.