A conservation group is turning to a federal court to help speed up the process of plugging aging offshore oil and gas wells and removing idle infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.
In a new lawsuit filed this week, the Center for Biological Diversity claimed thousands of wells and hundreds of offshore platforms are overdue to end oil and gas operations through decommissioning.
The group is calling for a federal judge to order the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to conduct a new National Environmental Policy Act review of the risks the fossil fuel infrastructure poses to the Gulf so that it can more effectively advance cleanup efforts.
“Only with the new, comprehensive analysis that NEPA demands can Defendants possibly understand how to best manage offshore oil and gas activity considering the mess of leaky wells, rusty platforms, and corroding pipelines that the oil and gas industry has created in the Gulf of Mexico,” the group told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
