Oil companies are required to pay for decommissioning their platforms, but industry changes mean taxpayers might foot some of the bill.
A bill aimed at ending offshore oil drilling in state waters calls for officials to negotiate with companies that own the leasing rights to the last three of those platforms, all off the coast of Orange County.
“To the extent that ending offshore drilling eliminates the risk of oil spills from those platforms, that is a massive net savings for California residents.”October 2021 oil spill off the coast of Huntington Beach Still, cost will be key. Based on the amounts spent to close down other offshore oil operations, the cost of shutting the three platforms off the coast of Orange County – known as platforms Eva, Emmy and Ester – would run between $1 billion and $2 billion. How much of that would be paid by oil companies, and how much by taxpayers, would be the subject of negotiations and, perhaps, a source of controversy in blue-leaning California.
By law, offshore drillers in California are required to pay for the costs of decommissioning their platforms, but only after the wells are no longer productive. And the state definition of “productive” is loose, allowing oil operators to keep drilling for a tiny amount of oil each year as a way to stave off the massive costs of closing down an offshore plant.shows that the oil operations off the coast of Orange County remain viable, if not big producers.
Still, the example that might determine the fate of SB 559 is the payout underway related to Platform Holly, an oil operation off the coast of Santa Barbara. Until it ceased production in 2017, Holly was the fourth well in state waters.
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