Three Gulf Coast states are calling on the Trump administration to rescind a Biden-era rule that aimed to secure billions of dollars from oil companies for cleanup of abandoned offshore wells and platforms.
In a letter last week to President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Republican state attorneys general Elizabeth Murrill of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi and Ken Paxton of Texas, warned that the financial assurances rule threatens the administration’s goal of restoring “energy dominance.”
“The Rule was one damaging effort the Biden administration implemented in its campaign to destroy the offshore industry through bureaucratic fiat,” the attorneys general wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 21.
The Biden administration had claimed the rule would protect taxpayers from having to maintain and decommission orphan wells on the Outer Continental Shelf, they said.
