Shell subsidiary to pay $2.2M fine for 2016 Gulf oil spill

NEW ORLEANS — A subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay a $2.2 million civil fine to the federal 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.

Shell Offshore’s fine, announced in the Federal Register on Friday, will be paid after the expiration of a 30-day comment period, NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reported. The money will be deposited in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is used to pay for oil spill cleanups.

The new fine is in addition to $3.9 million the company agreed to pay to state and federal agencies in July to settle natural resource damage charges stemming from the spill. About $3.5 million of that settlement will be used for natural resource restoration projects, with the rest aimed at repaying the agencies’ costs in responding to the spill.

The oil spill was the result of a series of events over several years that resulted in a pipeline installed about 3,000 feet (914 meters) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico becoming covered with debris and the weight of the debris causing a stress fracture in a joint. That break allowed crude oil to escape into the water, according to an investigative report released March 9, 2018, by the Department of Interior’s BSEE, which oversees safety issues involving drilling in federally-controlled waters offshore.

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