"House Democrats began Thursday making the case for stricter regulation of thousands of abandoned wells, platforms and pipelines off the U.S. coasts following one of the biggest off-shore spills in California in nearly 30 years.
A hearing by a sub panel of the House Natural Resources Committee comes as anger over oil fouling Huntington Beach has renewed demands for offshore oil drilling bans and led to bills mandating expensive leak detection equipment and new spill reporting requirements.
“Stronger federal regulation of this offshore infrastructure is essential to reduce future spills and other impacts and protect taxpayers from shouldering the cleanup costs,” said Representative Alan Lowenthal, a California Democrat who chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.
It’s also leading to fresh scrutiny of aging offshore oil and gas infrastructure. Of 55,000 oil and gas wells drilled in federal waters off the U.S. coast, 59% or roughly 32,000, have been abandoned, according to prepared testimony by Donald F. Boesch, a University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science professor."
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