US sued over delayed decom of offshore oil infrastructure

The Center for Biological Diversity, a US nonprofit, has sued the Interior Department for what it claims is an ongoing failure to examine the damage done by delayed decommissioning of offshore oil and gas infrastructure.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., said that federal agencies have violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider new information and changed circumstances showing that delayed decommissioning puts people and the environment at risk.

The lawsuit seeks to force the Department of the Interior to conduct a new analysis that will better protect people, wildlife, and the Gulf environment.

The organisation claimed that as of June 2023, there were more than 2,700 wells and almost 500 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico overdue for decommissioning which requires plugging wells and removing platforms or other equipment.

Also, nearly 600 idle wells in the Gulf have not even been temporarily plugged to prevent leaks before decommissioning. More than 800 idle wells have been unused for more than a decade.

“Cleaning up after yourself isn’t just a kindergarten skill, it’s the law. We now know the oil industry isn’t properly dealing with its mess and federal agencies have ignored these risks for years,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The law requires that offshore oil and gas operators permanently plug wells, remove platforms, and restore the seafloor environment once leases expire or infrastructure has been inactive for a certain period.

Recent Government Accountability Office reports have revealed that oil companies do not decommission wells within the deadlines. The investigation also found that the Interior has been permitting decommissioning-in-place without adequately studying or minimizing the risks posed by this old equipment.

According to the nonprofit, the Interior has never examined the environmental harms of oil and gas infrastructure and the last environmental analysis of Gulf oil and gas decommissioning was made in 2005 but that analysis assumed that this infrastructure would be decommissioned within the legal timeframes. This analysis, the Center stated, ignored harms from delayed decommissioning to critically endangered Rice’s whales, sea turtles, eastern black rails, and other imperilled wildlife.

“Interior needs to take a hard look at how old leaky wells, rusty platforms, and corroding pipelines put the ocean ecosystem at constant risk of spills and other harms. Private companies shouldn’t be allowed to make huge amounts of money drilling in public waters and then leave a wasteland for taxpayers,” Monsell added.