The Courts Strike Down Oilfield Contractor Penalty Liabilities
The question of whether oilfield contractors were subject to Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement civil and criminal penalties has been a major point of consternation for several years in the offshore energy development and exploration sector. The authors of this article discuss recent court actions striking down the government’s actions against oilfield contractors.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed the U.S. government’s appeal regarding a Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (“BSEE”) Notification of Incident of Noncompliance (“INC”) civil penalty issued against an oilfield contractor. This development brings closure to the long-standing question of whether BSEE has authority to enforce civil and criminal penalties against offshore contractors.
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“The Courts Strike Down Oilfield Contractor Penalty Liabilities,” by Jonathan K. Waldron and Sean T. Pribyl was published in the May 2018 edition of Pratt’s Energy Law Report (Vol. 18-5), an A.S. Pratt Publication, LexisNexis. Reprinted with permission.
This article was first published in January 2018 as a Blank Rome Maritime Developments Advisory.