Welcome to our sixth issue of Currents 2025. We are covering a multitude of issues in this edition, but we want to pass along a couple of announcements first. Again, thank you for reading! Amazon and Pennsylvania Join the...more
A series of recent actions undertaken by President Biden, near the end of his term, and President Trump, in the early days of his presidency, have called into question a key issue under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act...more
Republicans have swept the 2024 elections, returning Donald Trump to the White House as the 47th President and flipping the Senate to a Republican majority. Having narrowly maintained control of the House of Representatives,...more
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a strong, uncompromising pro-Hamas stance in the latter’s military conflict with Israel last week. In so doing, he torpedoed any potential in the near future for possible joint...more
● Offshore Oil and Gas at Risk of Potentially Catastrophic Cyberattack: GAO - “The industry includes about 1,600 offshore oil and gas facilities that are highly dependent on remotely connected operational technology, the...more
As offshore assets age, oil and gas companies face a wave of decommissioning obligations, with expenditures estimated to exceed US$200 billion in coming decades. Decommissioning is not simply demolition. It requires plugging...more
In 2014, we wrote about efforts by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to require less traditional parties to fund the decommissioning of idle oil and gas wells and related...more
Outlook for This Week in the Nation's Capital - Congress. The House and Senate have one week of legislative work remaining before they break for the Fourth of July recess period, and it looks to be quite busy. ...more
In a rare decision applying the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. §1331 et seq.(“OCSLA”), the United States Supreme Court has clarified, re-affirmed and perhaps (given the breadth of its opinion) expanded the...more
On May 2, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued the 2019 Well Control Rule (Rule), a long-awaited, revised (and final) well control and blowout preventer rule governing Outer Continental Shelf (OCS)...more
A federal court recently prohibited the U.S. Department of the Interior from approving any plans or permits for offshore fracking off the California coast until it complies with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the...more
Focus - Cost of officially downsized Delta tunnel plan still exceeds currently pledged funds - Sacramento Bee - Feb 9 The troubled Delta tunnels project was officially downsized Wednesday, as Governor Brown’s...more
This month’s headline developments are two independent contractor misclassification class action lawsuits: one was filed in New York against a Silicon Valley giant, Google Inc., and the second was filed in California against...more