Group sues federal government, claims it ignores harms of idle offshore oil and gas infrastructure

abcnews.go.com:

An environmental group has sued the Department of Interior in federal court for allegedly failing to account for the harms caused by delays in properly shutting down offshore oil and gas infrastructure

NEW ORLEANS — An environmental group is suing the federal government to force the U.S. Department of Interior to reassess the long-term environmental effects of delays in shutting down inactive oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity on Thursday, argues that the department has failed to properly account for harms caused by deteriorating, unused wells and other inactive oil and gas infrastructure over the past two decades.

“What we have now in the Gulf of Mexico is a mess of leaky wells, rusty platforms, and corroding pipelines created by the oil and gas industry, and that’s unacceptable,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director for the nonprofit. “The industry makes a huge profit off what they extract from public waters in the Gulf, and it’s only fair that they be the ones to pay for clean-up rather than leaving it to the taxpayers.”

The lawsuit includes the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore safety and environmental regulations, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages oil and gas development in federal waters.

A spokesperson for the department, which includes both bureaus, declined to comment.

The Department of Interior last assessed the impact of decommissioning offshore oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 and 1985.

The lawsuit claims those studies are “outdated” and falsely assumed that inactive Gulf wells would