LOS ANGELES (CN) — The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has agreed to review the operating plans for a group of aging oil platforms off the coast of Southern California that were involved in a large oil spill two years ago.
The agreement settles a 2022 lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, which claimed the bureau had allowed oil companies to operate the platforms under "woefully outdated" development and production plans despite a host of information that those plans do not reflect current science, the scope of activities at the platforms, and environmental and safety standards.
“Gambling with our ocean is inexcusable, and I’m glad these rusty offshore drilling platforms will get the long-overdue review they need,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the center, said Wednesday. “I won't be surprised if a meaningful review of drilling plans written back when disco was king reveals that the platforms need to be shut down.”
The review pertains to three drilling platforms and one processing platform at the so-called Beta Unit field off the coast of Huntington Beach that have been in operation since the early 1980s. The original development and production plans for the platforms estimated they would have ceased operation and been removed by 2015 at the latest, according to the environmentalist organization.
In October 2021, a 17-mile pipeline which ran from the platforms to a processing plant in Long Beach was damaged by a 1,200-foot cargo ship dragging its anchor in rough seas. However, the pipeline did not tear until months later.
Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp. and two of its subsidiaries agreed to plead guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act, pay a $7.1 million criminal fine and $5.8 million in compensation for the discharge of approximately 25,000 gallons of crude oil in the ocean.
The platforms' unanticipated lifetime combined with scientific data about the risks of corrosion, erosion, and fatigue stress to subsea pipelines, as well as changes in the equipment on the platforms, meant the original plans from the 1970s and 80s can no longer be relied on, the center said in its lawsuit.
This past April, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles denied the bureau's bid to dismiss the claims brought under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which requires the federal agency to to review and revise previously approved drilling plans based on new information or changes in operations.
That decision, the center said, was the first time any court had considered the issue of outdated offshore drilling plans and has created a legal precedent indicating that plans for other drilling platforms off California may also require review.
There are currently 23 oil platforms on the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf, installed between 1967 and 1989.
The center had sued the federal government already in January 2022 over the drilling platforms, that time under the Endangered Species Act. That lawsuit was stayed to give the federal agencies more time to complete a reinstated review of the risk oil spills in the area may pose for humpback populations.
National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to conclude its analysis by the end of February, according to the latest status report in that litigation.
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