While not natural structures, their platforms have been embedded into the muddy seabed long enough to become part of the ocean environment, providing a home for creatures like mussels and barnacles, which in turn attract larger fish and sea lions that find safety and food there.
After two and a half decades of studying the rigs, Bull says it’s clear to her: “These places are extremely productive, both for commercial and recreational fisheries and for invertebrates.”
Now, as California and the US shift away from offshore drilling and toward greener energy, a debate is mounting over their future. On one side are those who argue disused rigs are an environmental blight and should be removed entirely. On the other side are people, many of them scientists, who say we should embrace these accidental oases and that removing the structures is morally wrong. In other parts of the world, oil rigs have successfully become artificial reefs, in a policy known as rigs to reefs.
Its a lot worse. For profit corporations will never spend money on something that is just going to be a large liability to their bottom line. Capitalism literally tells you to not dismantle the rigs, keep oil and gas for as long and possible but only do the bare minimum clean up. Why spend millions on something that you can just leave alone and let someone else do it. The government literally let’s oil and gas wells unplugged. The only way for this problem to get solved is to make it a fee for every year that increases with interest under a maximum that way you hurt their bottom line. This way they either pay for those rigs which if you do the math right is higher then the amount to dismantle them or they pay the government even more.
I think you either didn’t read the article or didn’t understand it. The companies have to pay either way.
What’s weird to me, is that this Environment Defense Fund and others are so interested in the dismantling of the rigs even after sealing of the well and their only reason seems to be ‘visual pollution’, which is utter BS.
I disagree they save money by having it pushed into an “environmental conservation” agenda. Which as I said is an excuse not to pay which is always a liability after you’ve extracted every dollar.