CERCLA provisons and guidelines (if they are met) and really neat advancements in bio-remediation make this $117B price tag sound way past silly, and are downright ridiculous.
I was in the environmental field over 40 years, worked as Enviornmental Manager at a facility, that had staff that managed 100's of spills. Beleive me folks, it does not take $18.8M per contaminated site (based on article data and an average) to clean up a spills for 6200 abandoned sites
Not taking account:
(1) Storage and operation areas have containment devices where practical.
(2) O & G facilities are typically small footprinted areas.
(3) Contaminated areas are typically 6" deep. Bioremediation Costs before I retired was generously in the $30-$40 per cubic yard, to bring area back to background on TPH analyisis.. (Test for Total Petroluem Hydrocarbon). That means if you had a pretty decently large spill area or contaminated area of say 2500 square feet outside containment devices. Cleanup cost would generally cost you conservatively about $50,000, not $18.8 Million per site.
Article is pure bullshit, and alarmism. Hell, $18.8M would probably be enough for an entire large petrochemical plant.