[Applause]
my name is Emily Callahan and I’m amber
Jackson and today we’re gonna tell you a
story a story different than the one you
think you know about the realities of
offshore oil and gas in California there
are 27 offshore oil and gas platforms
these platforms are made of iron they
just look like big iron giants out there
and all of these platforms have a
booming ecosystem that exists below the
surface
our story starts here at the surface
where we see 27 offshore oil and gas
platforms off the coast of California
these are massive industrial structures
that dot our horizon and below the
surface they’re pumping up oil actively
every day but what happens when the oil
well dries up entered the engineering
feat of a lifetime here the oil
companies are faced with removing these
structures from the water column some of
them the size of the Empire State
Building it can be technically
challenging and costly as well as
environmentally significant when you
consider that below the surface every
beam and cross beam is covered in life
here we see schools of jack mackerel
we even see some of our some of the
california state fish the Garibaldi that
nest and make their permanent home here
on these structures here’s a little
garibaldi picture there and this is when
we want to talk about rigs to reef rigs
thérèse offers an alternative to
completely removing these structures
where an oil company chooses to modify
their platforms so that it can continue
to function as an artificial reef and
there are many different ways to do this
they can tow this reef structure to an
area of ecosystem need they can topple
the structure on its side or they can
just remove that upper 80 feet from the
water column which allows for ships to
safely draft over them all of these
different decommissioning options allow
that infrastructure to remain in the
water column and function as an
artificial reef but before we go any
further what exactly is an artificial
reef
well artificial reefing is not a new
concept
it actually began being used in practice
about a couple hundred years ago off of
Southeast Asia where fishermen would
place the structures on the seafloor to
observe how the fish would start to be
attracted to their nets scientists have
had their own take on the program by
placing reef balls on the seafloor to
observe how the life colonizes the
structure an artist to have had their
own take on the program by placing
installations on the seafloor to observe
how the life that grows there actually
enhances their art but what makes an oil
platform such a good artificial reef and
what makes an oil platform one of the
most productive ecosystems on the planet
well that has to do with the structure
itself often stretching as tall as 2,000
feet these platforms offer a lot of
surface area for life to colonize and
grow on additionally all the beams and
cross beams on the platform create
complexity and complexity creates a
healthy artificial reef which
invertebrates can grow on fish can use
all the nooks and crannies of the beams
in California these platforms actually
function in a very unique cycle of life
at the very top here we have all the
mussels and scallops and when those
mussels and scallops die they fall to
the ocean bottom where they create
enormous shell mounts these shell mounds
are then used by rock fish who lay their
eggs amongst the shells and when the
juveniles hatched they migrate back up
to the top of the platform creating a
very unique circle of life but how do we
know these platforms are actually
essential fish habitat well there’s a
few key questions we need to ask
ourselves are these platforms allowing
the fish to spawn and breed are they
contributing to a healthy ecosystem well
before we can answer those questions we
have to answer the age-old question of
production versus attraction are these
platforms merely temporarily providing
shelter for these fish or they actually
producing fish turns out we’ve started
to answer this question through stable
isotope chemistry which is essentially a
fancy way of saying you are what you eat
we can go into the gut of the fish to
observe what it’s been eating throughout
its lifetime
actually originated from the platform
itself in addition to these ecological
benefits that Emily just mentioned there
are some pretty substantial economic
benefits that come along with a rig
Strief program traditionally when an oil
company removes this structure they have
to remove it from the sea floor and that
can be very expensive up to seven
million if not greater than that but
through the rig’s reef program because
they’re modifying that structure to
remain in place they have a significant
cost savings potentially around six
million per structure so you can imagine
that the oil companies are pretty
incentivized to participate in this
program but they’re not the only ones
who benefit rig Streif program is
actually a law and 50% of any kind of
cost savings will go back to the state
of California into an endowment for
marine preservation and conservation but
this endowment will also cover the cost
of annual maintenance any sort of
liability associated with with a Riggs
reef program and the one-time expense
startup so what we’ve found is that this
is a great program to engage and
incentivize not only oil companies but
also the state of California now we’re
gonna take you on a little trip around
the world because there are oil
platforms in every single ocean so here
we see a mouth of the globe and the red
and blue represents oil and gas fields
the yellow represents four we are
actively drilling on those fields and as
you can see it’s highly concentrated
along the shoreline and offshore in fact
in every single ocean at this moment we
are drilling for oil and gas offshore so
you would think that a rig ster reef
program would be something that every
country and every ocean would be excited
about and excited to have but that’s not
the case in fact there are only a few
places in the world that have a rigged
street program California the Gulf of
Mexico and Malaysia
and it’s interesting because without
this kind of global integration of a
global understanding of a rigged story
flaw it’s difficult to have it fully
accept it
but before I get too deep into that
let’s take a closer look at California
where we have 27 offshore oil and gas
platforms and back in 2010 our former
governor Governor Schwarzenegger signed
the rigs to reef law into practice but
since then none of those platforms have
been reefed unlike that in the Gulf of
Mexico
they’ve been successfully reefing their
platforms for over 30 years
in fact they have somewhere between 500
and 600 reef platforms some of them
incorporated into their national marine
sanctuaries and marine parks off the
coast of South Carolina a private
investor bought one of these structures
and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast
kind of an innovative way to reuse an
offshore oil and gas platform and that
idea traveled all the way to Malaysia
where we see an innovation of the rig
story program here they have converted
this platform into an eco dive resort so
not only can people come and stay on it
and then dive the reef and the
surrounding areas but it also is an eco
resort so they are sustainable and
incorporate the locals into their
practice there our last stop is going to
be off the west coast of Africa and
Gabon where dr. Anrig Salah who’s a
National Geographic Explorer went and
dove on some of these platforms and what
he found is that while the areas around
the platforms were completely overfished
and trawled these platforms were many
sanctuaries for life and his research
actually got those structures
incorporated into Africa’s largest
marine park welcome back from your trip
now we’re going to weigh some of the
pros and cons of this program the first
con that we see is the lack of global
legislation for although most countries
have their own artificial reef programs
a rig service program is a different
beast entirely you need to take into
consideration every unique culture
unique ecosystems
and the economies of all the countries
additionally we need to look at our
oceans carrying capacity at what point
do we reef too many structures and it
becomes ocean dumping well they started
to look at this in the Gulf of Mexico
where they’ve looked at all of the
offshore industry combined and they
found that of all the platforms out
there it only accounted for about 2% of
the total hard substrate in the Gulf of
Mexico when you think about all the
sedimentation and runoff issues the Gulf
is currently experiencing this program
is really more of a band-aid than any
sort of solution to the lack of hard
substrate an additional con is the lack
of public understanding which is why
Amber and I are here today we are not
save the whales we’re saved the oil
platforms which is a little bit of a
difficult thing to swallow but we hope
that through research and education and
sharing with you all of our videos and
photos of these structures that we can
start to bring a better understanding of
the actual goals of the program another
con that we see is the fact that when
you reef a platform you leave it on the
ocean bottom and trawlers are not a fan
of this program and although trawling is
like taking a bulldozer the size of a
football field across an ocean bottom
it’s still an important source of
revenue for many countries and if
there’s a platform in the way of your
trawl you can no longer have access to
those fishing grounds and now we’ll take
a look at some of the pros especially
those ecological benefits Emily
mentioned at the beginning and the
potential for these platforms to enhance
our local fisheries we also see the
ability for them to compensate for
habitat loss as we as we oh my gosh
sorry I lost my voice there as we over
fish and pollution runoff continues to
degrade our near shore systems what
we’re finding is that species are moving
offshore and making a permanent home on
these structures they’re also some of
those economic benefits I mentioned and
the potential to create an endowment for
marine preservation and constant
here in California we also see this as a
potential way to reduce pollution
because if we were to remove these
structures here in California and bring
them on shore to be recycled the
material is is so massive like I
mentioned the size of the Empire State
Building California actually doesn’t
have the infrastructure in place to
properly recycle that so what they do is
they put it on a barge and send it
across the Pacific to be dismantled in
Asia and the second that barge goes
outside state waters it switches from
diesel to bunker bunker fuel and bunker
fuel makes diesel look like champagne
there’s a desk a very significant carbon
footprint associated with it so if we
are able to leave these structures in
place we purpose them as reefs we find
it is a good way to reduce our carbon
footprint now the rig stories program
doesn’t necessarily have to apply to
just oil platforms we also see
applications with offshore wind on the
East Coast they’re building massive wind
farms off of kenta Nantucket Cape Cod
and Rhode Island and if you look at this
structure you’ll notice that it looks a
little bit like an oil platform I’ll be
at the energy produced is much cleaner
General Electric is aware of this and
they actually hired National Geographic
photographer David Doubilet to go out
there and photograph some of the life
that’s been thriving on these offshore
wind farms and we hope that after this
presentation you’ll no longer look at
these structures as just dirty oil or
just bird killers but as potential
structures to harbor very unique and
special ecosystems but we encourage you
guys to come and follow us here because
we are launching a call to action to let
our legislators know how we want rigs to
reef in California this is an
opportunity we’ve partnered with
Patagonia to come and let your voice be
heard and if you follow this link here
the link on our Instagram handle you can
come and join us thank you thank you
[Applause] [Music]