An Interior Department appellate board has rejected an offshore oil company’s attempt to abandon a 40-year-old oil well off the coast of California without following full decommissioning rules.
Judges at the Interior Board of Land Appeals determined this week that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement “had a rational basis” for denying Noble Energy’s request to abandon the well in the Santa Barbara Channel. It’s been capped since 1985.
Administrative Judge David Gunter and Chief Administrative Judge Silvia Riechel Idziorek said in a ruling that Noble’s justification had focused on shorter-term risks posed by the well, which is located 10 miles from the California coast. BSEE, by contrast, had focused on long-term safety issues like leaks from the wellhead because of corrosion, the judges wrote.
It ”was reasonable for BSEE to set a high bar for Noble to establish that its proposed decommissioning would ‘[equal or surpass] current BSEE requirements,’” the judges wrote. “BSEE had a rational basis to conclude that Noble did not clear that bar.”
