"Ever since the first offshore platforms went up off Louisiana 85 years ago, the Gulf of Mexico has been an oil and gas juggernaut. But decades of drilling has left behind more than 14,000 old, unplugged wells at risk of springing dangerous leaks and spills that may cost more than $30 billion to plug, a new study has found. Nonproducing wells that haven’t been plugged now outnumber active wells in the gulf, the study says.
The researchers also found that, in federal waters, nearly 90 percent of the old wells were owned at some point in the past by giant oil companies known as the “supermajors,” including BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon. Under federal law, that means those companies would still be responsible for cleanup costs, even though they might have sold the wells in the past, the study’s authors said.
Oil and gas companies are responsible under federal and state rules for securely plugging wells that are no longer in service. In the boom-and-bust world of oil and gas drilling, though, operators frequently go bankrupt, leaving wells orphaned and unplugged, and taxpayers on the hook."
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