What Do We Do With Abandoned Oil Rigs?

The short answer is to turn them into foundations for new coral reefs! Take for example, the Platform Holly, a decommissioned oil rig. Standing 235ft (72m) above the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the abandoned oil rig is now home to colourful fish, crabs, starfish and mussels that congregate on the oil rig’s huge steel pylons. BBC has more details on how we can turn other oil rigs into new homes for creatures and coral reefs:

But there is one way in which these old rigs can be remarkably useful: the subsurface rig provides the ideal skeleton for coral reefs. Teeming with fish and other wildlife, scientists say that offshore rigs like Platform Holly are in fact the most bountiful human-made marine habitats in the world.

The practice of transforming rigs into reefs in the United States dates back almost 40 years. In 1984, the US Congress signed the National Fishing Enhancement Act which recognised the benefits artificial reefs provided and encouraged states to draw up plans to turn defunct rigs into reefs. The five coastal states on the Gulf of Mexico – Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – all have rigs-to-reefs programmes and have converted more than 500 oil and gas platforms into artificial reefs.

When oil companies cease drilling in these states, they decommission their platform by sealing the oil well. Then they can either choose to remove the entire platform or convert it into a reef by removing just the upper section of the structure.