The American Petroleum Institute is defending the Biden administration’s offshore oil regulations against a legal challenge from Gulf states and midsize oil companies, reports E&E News.
API, the nation’s leading trade organization for the oil industry, filed a request to intervene in a Louisiana court case last week over the Interior Department’s recently finalized bonding rule.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule aims to ensure oil companies clean up their old wells, platforms and pipelines by requiring “supplemental” insurance for some companies.
Republican attorneys general from Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi sued over the rule in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana last month, alleging the plan’s potential $7 billion cost to midsize oil operators would have “devastating and immediate effects on Gulf drilling.” Read more.
