Decommissioning

Four industry trade groups on Monday submitted requests to the Department of Interior and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) seeking information about why changes were made to financial assurances and bonding requirements for Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas producers.

In an effort to ensure oil and natural gas operators working on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) have enough financial resources, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) is proposing that entities holding rights-of-way (ROW) report actual costs incurred when their pipes are decommissioned.

The now-closed 2,200 MW, 438-acre San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) could be totally shuttered and, decommissioned in 10 years, an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) told a California state Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee hearing in Sacramento Tuesday.

Driven by more stringent environmental regulations and low-priced natural gas, many aging coal-fired generation plants will be closed during the next seven years, creating a business for decommissioning services that will exceed $5 billion, according to a report by Boulder, CO-based Navigant Research.

An explosion occurred late Tuesday in the engine room of a commercial diving vessel that was decommissioning a small segment of ANR Pipeline offshore Louisiana, sending six crew members of the vessel to area hospitals, said a spokesman for TransCanada, which owns ANR. The U.S. Coast Guard still is searching for one unaccounted member of the crew.