Rigs-to-Reefs

My post-doctoral project titled "Sea Stories: Constructing Nature in the Rigs-to-Reefs Debate" is an examination of the modern history of the Rigs-to-Reefs program in which decommissioned oil and gas offshore platform jackets are converted into artificial reefs. In this project, I examine the scientific and political controversies surrounding Rigs-to-Reefs since the mid-1970s in the Gulf of Mexico, California Bight and North Sea. By analyzing the historical development of artificial coral reef research in conjunction with political and business discussions about offshore disposal of oil structures, the project hopes to shed light on why policies have developed differently in the three areas. I am particularly interested in how a combination of science, politics, economics, and culture work together to define what is “natural.”

The project was funded by the Research Council of Norway's Miljø 2015 program.

Publications

"Rigs-to-reefs is more than rigs and reefs"

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10: 178–179. Available online.

This peer-reviewed letter makes a case for integrating policy history into scientific recommendations for rigs-to-reefs programs by examining the failed attempt to make the Odin platform into Norway's first rig-to-reef project.

“OSPAR's exclusion of rigs-to-reefs in the North Sea”

Ocean and Coastal Management 58 (2012): 57-61. Available online. Accepted, uncorrected version

Abstract: This article focuses on how the debate over the deepwater disposal of offshore oil and gas installations has been central to shaping North Sea artificial reef policy. Through a close empirical historical study, this article reconstructs how Greenpeace’s protest of the deepwater disposal of the Brent Spar spurred the exclusion of rigs-to-reefs (the conversion of obsolete offshore oil and gas structures into artificial reefs) as a viable decommissioning option by the primary international treaty organization with jurisdiction over North Sea waters, the Oslo-Paris Commission (OSPAR). During OSPAR’s artificial reef guideline development, several OSPAR contracting parties implied that there is a conspiracy among oil companies to use rigs-to-reefs as a cover for evading the deepwater disposal rules, although they never presented evidence to back up these claims. In the face of pressure to “close the loophole” for deepwater disposal and in spite of scientific objection, OSPAR’s final guidelines excluded all non-virgin materials as acceptable reef construction materials, essentially banning rigs-to-reefs. Because a significant number of steel offshore installations will be decommissioned in North Sea waters in the decade and the most up-to-date science has concluded that manmade deepwater reefs may be beneficial to some species including threatened coldwater coral, this article suggests that OSPAR revise its guidelines. Rigs-to-reefs should be not categorically excluded; a case-by-case determination of the suitability of a structure for reuse as an artificial reef would be most appropriate.

“An oasis in a watery desert? Discourses on an industrial ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico Rigs-to-Reefs program”

History and Technology 25 (December 2009): 343-364. Available online

Abstract: This article explores how in the years after 1980 a spectrum of historical actors came to see petroleum platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as a necessary part of the Gulf ecosystem and how such views affected platform removal policies. Through a discourse analysis of the Rigs-to-Reefs program, in which old offshore petroleum facilities were converted into artificial reefs, this article examines how actors presented to the public their notions of the relationship of the Gulf ecosystem with technological offshore structures. Through this case we see how ideas of technology and nature were mutually constructed via discourses and what affect that had on policies.

Forthcoming Publications

"Environmentalists on both sides: Enactments in the California rigs-to-reefs debate" to be published in an edited collection from the workshop "Bringing STS into Environmental History", under contract with University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012.

"Mixing oil and water: Naturalizing offshore oil rigs in Gulf Coast aquariums" to be published in a special issue of the Journal of American Studies in 2012

Reefs or rubbish? A comparative history of the Rigs-to-Reefs concept. Book manuscript under preparation.

Conference/Seminar Papers

"Naturalizing offshore oil structures in aquarium exhibits," Umeå Studies in Science, Technology & Environment Seminar Series, 29 March 2011. See the flyer.

“A controversial platform: The politics of fishermen and environmentalists in the Rigs-to-Reefs debate,” World Congress of Environmental History, 2009.

“An oasis in a watery desert: Maintaining an industrial ecology in the Gulf of Mexico with the Rigs-to-Reefs program,” American Society for Environmental History, 2009.

“Contesting conversion: The dynamics of Rigs-to-Reefs discussions,” Society for the History of Technology, 2008.

Public Project Dissemination

"Rigger bør bli rev" [Rigs should become reefs], DagensNæringsliv, 23 November 2009.

“En dårlig plan eller dårlig timing? Hvorfor det norske Rigs-to-Reefs programmet havarerte” [A bad plan or bad timing? Why the Norwegian Rigs-to-Reefs program failed], Forum for historie, kultur og samfunn, University of Stavanger, 18 March 2009.