Congress demands public accounting of offshore oil cleanup delays
H.R. 8099 — Plug Offshore Wells Act · Filed by Maxine Dexter (D-OR) · 10 cosponsors · Introduced Mar 26, 2026 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
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What it does
This bill requires the Secretary of the Interior to publish an annual public report on offshore oil and gas decommissioning—tracking how many wells, platforms, and pipelines operators are required to remove or decommission, how many applications are received, how many are overdue, and what enforcement actions BSEE has taken against non-compliant operators. The report must be submitted to Congress and posted on the Interior Department website within 2 years of enactment, then annually thereafter.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is mandatory public reporting on offshore decommissioning compliance and enforcement. It creates no new regulatory requirements, subsidies, or exemptions—only visibility into existing legal obligations and their enforcement.
What the text implies
- Public reporting may increase political pressure on BSEE to enforce decommissioning deadlines more aggressively, potentially accelerating cleanup timelines.
- Transparency on enforcement actions (citations, penalties, disqualifications) may deter operators from non-compliance if reputational or operational consequences are material.
- Annual reporting creates a public record that can be used by environmental groups, Congress, and media to track whether decommissioning backlogs are growing or shrinking over time.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Mandatory public reporting on decommissioning compliance creates transparency and accountability for offshore oil and gas cleanup obligations, allowing citizens and Congress to monitor whether operators are meeting legal deadlines and whether enforcement is adequate. This strengthens public oversight of environmental remediation without imposing new costs on citizens.
Named in the bill
Secretary of the Interior, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), 30 CFR 250 (offshore oil and gas regulations), subpart Q (decommissioning requirements), section 250.1700, 250.1750, 250.1752, 250.1754 (decommissioning standards)
Where it stands
10 cosponsors: 10 Democrats.
- Mar 26, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Mar 26, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Natural Resources · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 1 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $260,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 79 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Maxine Dexter, the sponsor, reported $365,744 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Ocean Conservancy — $260,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 16, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,201 characters) on Aug 12, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 16, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress demands public accounting of offshore oil cleanup delays” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr8099 Report an error
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