It often seems like polluter do n’t get near enough attention and punishment from the governance — but authorization crack down on one oil and gas manufacturer that had been shirking its cleanup spot duties this week in the strange move of raid its post .
broker from the U.S. Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency searched the offices of QuarterNorth Energy LLC in Lafayette , Louisiana this week , Bloomberg report Thursday , attend for information on an vegetable oil spill at one of the caller ’s wells QuarterNorth Energy is a new ship’s company , but it was formed out of the ruins of an older one : Fieldwood Energy LLC , whichfiled for bankruptcyin 2020 .
harmonize to aninvestigationfiled by the DOI , in January of 2021 , there was a press incident at a gas well possess by Fieldwood off the slide of southern Louisiana , which was not report to authorities until August 2021 and was still not ready a year later , causing a turgid spill in January of 2022 . “ Fieldwood ’s lack of mitigation , communication , and urgency to treat the issues affiliate with [ the well ] played a major role in the event leading up to the incident , ” the DOI noted in its report .
An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.Photo: Gerald Herbert (AP)
in brief after file for bankruptcy FieldWood signalize a two - class promise in February of last class with Union prosecuting attorney to reach a compromise : in central for cooperating with authorities and pay a $ 2 million fine , the government gibe to not investigate the company forits role in two oil colour spills in the Gulf in 2015 and 2018 . The incident at the well off the seacoast of southern Louisiana may be in intrusion of that agreement , sources narrate Bloomberg , and that may have prompted the raid this week .
Fieldwood ’s ship’s company ’s bankruptcy reorganization plan was approved last year , and last September , Gristdetailedhow the bankruptcy plan is make a complex and unruffled sound struggle between the company over who is blend in to end up holding the check for their old asset . Part of the company ’s plan entailed splitting its more profitable plus between its successor company while remove older Herbert George Wells to two other corporations — as well as straight - up abandoning some 1,170 wells , 280 pipeline , and 270 drilling platforms , effectively attempting to goldbrick any sort of responsibility for their cleanup position . While federal and local regulations require companies to clean house up old drilling sites , even through failure , this cleanup can often fall to the bottom of the listing in fiscal grandness during a bankruptcy hearing ; investors scrambling for a remaining piece of the pie will often take the air aside with all the money that ’s pull up stakes , leaving nothing for environmental harm .
The QuarterNorth / Fieldwood disaster is just the bakshis of the iceberg when it come in to the dangers lay by fossil oil companies choke bankrupt and not doing due diligence on cleaning up their messes . Since 2015 , more than260 vegetable oil companiesin the U.S. have filed for failure ; many of them are endure through processes like the one described above , as they try and reckon out ways to wiggle out of pay for their cleanup obligation .
Bankruptcy
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