How bankruptcy lets oil and gas companies evade cleanup rules
Bankruptcy code allows companies to abandon “burdensome” properties, a provision companies have tried to use to discard entire oil wells.
via Grist: https://grist.org/accountability/oil-gas-bankruptcy-fieldwood-energy-petroshare/
“The crucial feature of these fossil bankruptcies — where fossil companies are using bankruptcy to get out of environmental obligations — is that a company can’t pay all of its debts,” said Joshua Macey, a University of Chicago law professor specializing in environmental law and bankruptcy. “The only way to solve this is to insist that, before bankruptcy, the firm is either doing cleanup contemporaneously or has a guarantee that there will be sufficient assets to do cleanup.”