Sponsors (11)
The bill increases public and regulatory transparency and accountability around offshore decommissioning—improving environmental oversight for communities and regulators—while imposing modest taxpayer-funded administrative costs, creating potential commercial/legal exposure for operators, and delaying those transparency benefits for up to two years.
Taxpayers, local governments, and coastal communities gain annual, detailed public reporting from the Department of the Interior on offshore decommissioning counts and statuses, improving public visibility into what infrastructure exists and what work is planned or completed.
Regulators and taxpayers can better track environmental risk from legacy offshore infrastructure because reports will specify missed decommissioning deadlines and whether pipelines and facilities were removed or left in place.
Publishing enforcement actions (notices, orders, penalties, disqualifications) increases accountability for operators and may deter noncompliance, improving oversight and potential enforcement outcomes.
Coastal communities and local governments will not see these transparency benefits until the first report, which can be delayed up to two years, leaving near-term decommissioning backlogs and risks less visible.
Operators could face reputational, commercial, or legal exposure from public release of detailed enforcement and noncompliance data, which may raise litigation risk or commercial harms for energy companies.
Requiring and publishing more detailed decommissioning data may increase reporting and administrative costs for the Department of the Interior, which are ultimately borne by taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Interior Secretary to publish an annual public report on offshore oil and gas decommissioning, including applications, missed deadlines, in-place decommissioning, pipeline removal, and enforcement actions.
Official title: To require the Secretary of the Interior to annually submit to Congress, and make publicly available on a website, a report on decommissioning offshore oil and gas wells, platforms, and pipelines, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Maxine Dexter · Last progress March 26, 2026
Requires the Secretary of the Interior to publish an annual public report on decommissioning of offshore oil and gas wells, platforms, and pipelines. The first report is due within two years of enactment and must cover the prior calendar year, with annual updates thereafter. The report must include counts of required and received decommissioning applications, facilities missing regulatory decommissioning deadlines, approvals to decommission in place, lengths of pipelines decommissioned in place and removed, and the status of enforcement actions by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement related to decommissioning.