Reading comprehension

Diego Ramón Vargas Guerrero

IP4A
Discussion of the eventual fate of the populations of fishes and invertebrates beneath platforms
has led to global reefing of the submerged portions of offshore platforms at the time of
decommissioning. Deliberation of reefing decommissioned platforms and many years of scientific
study beneath California platforms has culminated in a California State law that now allows
consideration of the concept.

Decommissioning is the process of ending operations at an offshore oil and gas platform. Usually
during decommissioning, the platform is completely removed and the seafloor returned to its
unobstructed pre-lease condition. However, there are other options that entail reefing the
submerged sections of the platform structure (BSEE, 2017a). Rigs-to-Reefs (RtR) is the practice of
converting decommissioned oil and gas platforms into artificial reefs. Such biotic reefs have been
created from oil and gas platforms in the United States (U.S.), Brunei, and Malaysia. In the U.S.,
ownership and liability for the part of the platform comprising the RtR belongs to the adjacent
coastal state. The reefing option has been most popular in the Gulf of Mexico where thousands of
platforms have been installed and removed with about 11% of decommissioned platforms
adopted into state artificial reef programs. Although several platforms have been installed and
removed offshore southern California, none have been reefed.

Starting in the mid-1960s and ending about 1990, 24 oil and gas production facilities were installed
in federal waters offshore California in a scattered string from coastal San Luis Obispo to Orange
Counties. The areas of concentration included the offshore Santa Maria Basin, the Santa Barbara
Channel, and San Pedro Bay.

Installed to produce hydrocarbons, mostly oil, and some lesser amounts of gas, from the rich
formations that extend from onshore to offshore along the central and south-central coast. To
date, within federal waters, only one of the facilities, the Offshore Storage and Treatment Vessel
with its Single Anchor Leg Mooring system, has been decommissioned and removed, leaving 23 oil
and gas production platforms currently on the southern California Outer Continental Shelf . Within
California state waters, offshore oil production from piers began nearly 100 years earlier than
development in federal waters. Only one of these platform, Platform Holly, off the City of Goleta in
Santa Barbara County, is in sufficient depth of water to be considered for reefing.

While more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 1.3 trillion cubic feet of gas have been produced from
these operations, production volumes from offshore California have been steadily decreasing over
the past 20 years essentially due to the decreasing amount of petroleum within the developed
formations. The majority of platforms have exceeded the projected life expectancy of their
operations. The huge structures themselves and the significant layers of invertebrates have, in
turn, provided habitat and sustenance for fish species, which in their turn provide for other fish
species offshore California. Consideration of whether to completely remove a platform or to leave
the submerged jacket as a reef is no longer a decision for California citizens that will occur in the
distant future.

federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, most off Louisiana and Texas, with perhaps another 1000 in
Gulf state waters. The first offshore oil well in the United States was brought in by Kerr- McGee in
1947 in the Gulf of Mexico, about 45 miles south of Morgan City in the Ship Shoal Bloc 32 field,
marking the birth of the offshore oil and gas industry. Since that time, thousands of platforms
have been both installed and removed from the Gulf, and, currently, annual removals exceed
installations . Off California, 23 offshore platforms have been installed within federal waters
beginning in 1967.

Seven platform installations occurred in state waters prior to this time. There is little public
support for further petroleum development off California at this time, and it is highly unlikely that
will change in the foreseeable future.

Platform installation

A jacket is a steel support structure that rests on the ocean's floor and has columns or legs
extending from below the seafloor up through the sea surface. Pilings are driven through the
tubular legs of the jacket into the seafloor to hold the jacket in place. According to federal officials
at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), most fixed platforms are typically
found in shallow water, but some fixed platforms are sited in water depths between 400 feet and
1400 feet. Production facilities in deeper water are floating structures, without jackets, that are
tethered to the seafloor