No More Deadbeat Drillers
Cleaning Up Old Offshore Drilling Infrastructure
When U.S. offshore wells, pipelines, and platforms get dangerously old or just aren’t useful anymore, the law requires oil and gas companies to decommission their equipment — that is, to safely and responsibly remove it and restore the seabed to its natural condition. But that costs money, and most companies don’t want to pay.
In the Gulf of Mexico, over 75% of inactive oil and gas facilities are overdue for decommissioning — thousands of wells need to be plugged and hundreds of platforms need to be removed. And that number is going to grow as old drilling activities wind down. The waters off California and Alaska are in similar situations.
The Problem
Failure to decommission aging offshore infrastructure presents massive risks for people and the environment, including federally protected species like loggerhead sea turtles and humpback whales. These risks include leaks of oil, chemicals, and gas — including methane, a climate bomb — and catastrophes like spills, fires, and explosions. Decaying platforms and pipelines are especially dangerous for boaters, oil and gas workers, and other people on the water, while unplugged wells can contaminate the marine ecosystem and risk catastrophic oil spills that kill animals and devastate local economies. The longer old equipment is left abandoned, the greater the risks.
In April 2025 an unplugged 82-year-old well near Garden Island Bay, Louisiana, spewed oil into the coastal marshes. Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard.Yet there’s a concerning pattern of oil companies evading their legal obligations to decommission their old offshore infrastructure. Under the industry playbook, it’s common for a major oil company to offload its declining oil project to a smaller company that later declares bankruptcy to avoid costly cleanup responsibilities. That kind of maneuver delays decommissioning, sometimes for decades — and lax law enforcement and regulatory loopholes worsen the problem.
As a “guarantee” that offshore projects will be cleaned up, the federal government requires some oil and gas companies to provide surety bonds for decommissioning. If a company walks away without doing that work, the federal government can get compensation from the surety company that provided the bond. But current regulations don’t require companies to have nearly enough bonding to cover cleanup costs. In fact the federal government only holds about $3.5 billion in bonds to cover decommissioning costs that total up to $70 billion.
Oil companies are making huge profits from public waters and then leaving a mess behind — potentially leaving the U.S. government (and by extension taxpayers) to shoulder most of the cost.
Our Campaign
Deadbeat fossil fuel companies shouldn’t get more leases and permits for new wells, pipelines, and platforms when they’re behind on decommissioning their old ones. To keep ocean waters clean and marine wildlife healthy, the Center is working to accelerate well plugging, platform removal, and ocean restoration.
We advocate for robust policies and rules that truly hold oil companies accountable for cleanup. We also take legal action against the federal government and states to enforce existing oil and gas cleanup laws and ensure proper environmental review when decommissioning is delayed.
Offshore Oil Cleanup Tracker
We crunched the numbers. The Center’s analysis of federal data shows which companies operate wells and offshore platforms that are overdue for decommissioning.
