Shell Offshore fined another $2.2M

Shell Offshore Inc. has agreed to pay a $2.2M in civil penalties to the U.S. government to settle charges that the company violated the Clean Water Act by spilling 1,900 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in May 2016 when a subsea pipeline cracked at the company’s Green Canyon oil field. The fine was announced in the Feb. 1 edition of the Federal Register. The fine will be paid after the expiration of a 30-day comment period. The money will be deposited in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is used to pay for oil spill cleanups. The newest fine is in addition to $3.9M Shell Offshore has agreed to pay in July to Louisiana and federal agencies to settle natural resource damage charges stemming from that spill. About $3.5M of the settlement will be used for natural resource restoration projects. The rest would go to repaying the agencies' costs in responding to the spill. (Source: NOLA.com 02/01/19) Among Shell Offshore projects in the Gulf of Mexico are the Vito deep-water development – the 11th deep-water project in the area; and Shell’s Kaikias, another deep-water project that uses a sub-sea tieback design.