Maritime Administration August 15, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Maritime Administration is establishing regulations governing administrative determinations of availability of coastwise- qualified launch barges to be used in the transportation and launching of offshore oil drilling or production platform jackets in specified projects. This rulemaking implements provisions of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2004, which, among other things, requires the Secretary of Transportation (acting through the Maritime Administrator) to adopt procedures to determine if coastwise-qualified vessels are available for platform jacket transport and launching, and, if not, to allow the use of non-coastwise qualified foreign built vessels. The notice of proposed rulemaking for this action was published in the Federal Register on August 15, 2005 (70 FR 47771) with comments due by October 14, 2005. The opening comment period was extended on October 19, 2005 (70 FR 60770) and closed on December 13, 2005. The Maritime Administration is hereby giving notice that we received and have granted a request by a commenting party to open a reply comment period for this rulemaking. Reply comments are responses to comments that were filed during the previous comment periods for this rulemaking.