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Yahoo!As negotiations regarding the so-called “Rigs to Reef” legislation in California continue, Orange County Coastkeeper hosted a conference in Newport Beach last weekend to continue discussion on two options for how to deal with decommissioned oil rigs — full removal or partial preservation.
Participants, mainly coming from the Newport area, with a few delegates from Santa Barbara — where the majority of California’s 27 rigs are located — and some from further down the coast, sought to contribute their range of perspectives to a discussion on the issue. In addition to the expected environmentalists, many fishermen, oil industry workers, and a few politicians were also in attendance.
PreserveReefs.org
Rather than fostering any actual debate, however, the conference seemed to mainly just frame the issue. Regardless of the audience’s varied constitution, the day’s agenda steered the conversation decidedly toward the “reefs” option, as each speaker focused on discussing the advantages and aspects of that process. Talks centered around things like platform to platform assessment, ensuring net environmental benefit, and generation of state revenue — all things that are already in the proposed bill.
The only speaker to entertain a dissenting opinion was Dr. Brock Berstein, who concluded that “the bottom line is, there is no right answer.”
“There’s objective information available, but how you weigh that information against each other depends on your values,” Berstein pointed out.
PreserveReefs.org
Assembly Speaker John Pérez, who first proposed this most recent bout of legislation, made a quick appearance and revealed his main concern — money. His job made easier by the fact that the current economic climate has left the state in no position to turn down revenue, he took every opportunity to ignore any mention of liability. Mike Genest, the state’s former director of finance, also gave a short speech describing the reefs option as a “win-win” situation. Genest noted that, “In this environment, rigs to reefs really could happen.”
During a roundtable discussion, mentions of potential problems with the legislation — such as the fact that only 50 percent of money saved by not completely disassembling rigs actually goes to the state — were not raised. The strongest proponent of ecosystemic integrity, Zeke Grade, could not make it for personal reasons.
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Erika Martin is an Independent intern.
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The original requirement in the devil's deal allowing offshore oil rigs was to completely remove them after their useful life was over and to also remove the mounds of potentially toxic drill muds and cuttings surrounding a rig's legs along with the accumulated molluscan and barnacle shells sloughed off during years of maintenance and cleaning operations. The idea was to restore platform sites to original condition. While it's true that oil rigs attract certain species of fish (so does anything floating on the surface or reposing on the bottom), what's being ignored by "rigs to reefs" proponents is the long term status of a rusting pile of metal as the ocean slowly reclaims rig materials through saltwater corrosion. What eventually evolves is a pile of rust and excess iron has been implicated as a cause for increasing red tides in coastal areas around the world.
Zeke Grader (not "Grade") is right: get the damn piles of scrap iron out of our ocean! Don't let oil companies off the hook. And any politician supporting the cockamamie idea of rigs-to-reefs on the basis of money for the bankrupt state is not only giving a gift to oil companies in the money they'll be saving from the deal they signed up for, he is also selling the integrity of California's coastal resources which belong to the people. Talk about being "dumb as mud."
Pagurus (anonymous profile)
July 30, 2010 at 8:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As revealed during the California Ocean Protection Council meeting last month, formal estimates have placed the price of removal of the rigs at $1.2 billion, but keeping them in place in the ocean at $0.5 billion or a $500 million price to the oil industry. Therein lies the $700 million difference and just perhaps why the offshore oil industry is so keen on letting the oil rigs remain in the public ocean.
If the State of California grew some courage and required the oil industry to pay $1.1 billion for the new privilege to leave the oil rigs in the public ocean, would the oil industry still be so strong a supporter of the "rigs to reef" proposal?
Call their bluff. Any net gain in benefits to marine fisheries should be a bonus perk for the public.
David_Pritchett (David Pritchett)
August 1, 2010 at 1:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)