WASHINGTON – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB-1866, a bill that will strengthen California’s regulations governing the plugging and cleaning up of defunct or abandoned oil and gas wells, a process known as decommissioning. Andrew Hartsig, an expert on offshore oil and gas policy and senior director of Arctic Conservation at Ocean Conservancy, issued the following statement in response:

“This is excellent news from California. Oil and gas operators have benefitted from weak decommissioning policy for far too long, and we hope that this state legislation spurs action to close similar loopholes in federal offshore waters, where the problem has largely been out of sight, out of mind. 

“As of June 2023, the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico alone contained roughly 2,700 wells and 500 platforms that were considered delinquent. This idle and deteriorating infrastructure in the ocean is a growing risk to the environment and wildlife, and a growing risk to taxpayers if the government is forced to use tax dollars to cover cleanup costs. Recent Ocean Conservancy analysis found that if the challenges with decommissioning policy are not fixed and the backlog is not addressed, the number of overdue offshore wells in need of decommissioning could nearly double by 2030 to more than 5,000 wells. 

“We’re excited to see progress on this issue in California. For the sake of our ocean, it’s time for the federal government to follow their lead.”

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Andrew Hartsig is available for interview upon request. 

Read Ocean Conservancy’s new report on decommissioning,“Protecting the Ocean and Taxpayers by Strengthening Standards for Offshore Oil and Gas Decommissioning,” here. 

Andrew Hartsig will be participating in a panel discussion on decommissioning policy Thursday, September 26 as part of New York Climate Week. To register for the webinar, please visit this page.

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