Offshore drilling has devastating impacts on oceans and coastal communities. It’s also expensive. It carries the risk of oil spills, which destroy marine ecosystems. It pollutes the air and water and exacerbates climate change. The seismic blasting11 harms dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals. It’s horrible for the environment.
Plus, chronic irresponsibility is a HUGE problem:
“Once an operator shuts down a well—usually because it is no longer profitable—the company is required to remove its equipment and help restore the area that was damaged by its operations. But in reality, this doesn’t always happen. Many abandoned wells (idle wells with a known owner) and orphaned wells (wells with no responsible owner to be found) remain uncapped and leak oil, methane, and other pollutants into our oceans and atmosphere every day. Researchers estimate that properly plugging the 28,232 permanently abandoned wells in our federal waters, along with the ones currently in use, would cost around $47 billion. That doesn’t even take into account orphaned and abandoned wells in state waters.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.7: Department of the Interior here.