An Obama administration official said on Monday in Houston that though the federal agency policing offshore drilling historically is focusing primarily on oil and gas companies but the services firms, drilling rig suppliers and other contractors will soon site a regulatory reach by the agency.

Michael Bromwich, the Head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement further said in his statement that these changes could involve new fines and other penalties being levied on the contractors that are engaged in "egregious" behavior during their work on projects in federal waters leased for oil and gas development. He also informed in his statement about the opening day of the Offshore Technology Conference at Reliant Park.

Bromwich marked that "There is a virtue in the clarity that we've had historically in being able to go directly against the operators even when it relates to contractors, but there are at least a small number of cases where we want to be able to go against contractors. Certainly in at least some cases, where the behavior of non-operators — that is, contractors - is egregious enough, we need to have the ability to move directly to enforcement actions, through the assessment of civil fines and through the other regulatory tools that we have".

According to Bromwich, an internal review of current laws has already concluded about the agency’s broad legal authority over all offshore lease related activities be it by lessees, operators or contractors.