Rigs-to-Reefs

Rigs-to-Reefs (RTR) is the practice of converting decommissioned offshore oil and petroleum rigs into artificial reefs. Such biotic reefs have been created from oil rigs in the United States, Brunei and Malaysia. In the United States, where the practice started and is most common, Rigs-to-Reefs is a nationwide program developed by the former Minerals Management Service (MMS), now Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The program has been generally popular with fishermen, the oil industry, and government regulators in the Gulf of Mexico, where offshore platforms develop into coral reefs, and as of September 2012, 420 former oil platforms, about 10 percent of decommissioned platforms, have been converted to permanent reefs.

Opposition in California has prevented a rigs-to-reefs program on the West Coast of the US. Similarly, environmental opposition has prevented implementation of Rigs-to-Reefs in the North Sea.

Inevitably, marine organisms attach themselves to the underwater portions of oil production platforms, transforming them into artificial reefs.

These platforms continue to function as long as the reservoirs underneath them provide oil at a profitable rate. At the end of their productive lives they must be decommissioned and removed (in the US within one year). An alternative to removal is to turn the rig into a reef through the Rigs-to-Reef (RTR) program. All coastal states in the US have such artificial reef programs in the interest of increasing ocean fisheries but not all participate in RTR. The rig's steel structures are stable and durable. They create shelter for marine life in open waters where there was none.

Note that production platforms are often called "rigs"; that terminology is used occasionally in this article—and indeed in the term Rigs-to-Reefs. However, within the industry "rigs" refers to apparatus with a derrick that can drill and service wells. (Most production platforms do not have such equipment installed.)

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