Sivas

Sivas said she expects the Trump administration may do as requested to limit protections for wetlands, which the construction industry has also been seeking.

“It’s going to throw climate policy into many years of litigating what these cases actually mean when applied to individual rulemakings,” said Deborah Sivas, an environmental law professor at Stanford University.

Still, the state would face a fight over future earnings if it forced an operator to close a productive platform, Sivas said.

“As they age, these platforms become more and more fragile” and corroded from ocean water, said Deborah Sivas, professor of environmental law at Stanford Law School.

Unlike potential economic losses, “you can’t really do that kind of quantitative assessment for a wetlands being undermined,” said Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School.