Oil Platform Questions

Here is an interesting article about about oil platforms being a haven for overfished marine life. By law, when the oil supply is gone, the gigantic pumps have to be removed. Could that be in a few years or a few decades? The cost, I'm sure will be astromonical. Now, a marine biologist is saying that these platforms help overfished species and should stay. Is this true or just a front so the companies that own the oil platforms won't have to spend the money to take them down? Does the platform's ability to help marine life out weight whatever damage it may do otherwise if it stays?

I now question this on another level. What about how the platforms impact migratory birds? There was an entry awhile ago in Crows Really Are Wise about researchers studying migration patterns and the birds that pop up on platforms that are too exhausted to go on. Birds die from so many things during migration, one of them being that some are too weak to keep going. Since humans are adding new ways for birds to die like cell phone towers and loss of habitat, what if we try to make up for it by turning the platforms into feeding and resting stations during migration? Yes, some would argue that's helping a weak bird who shouldn't survive keep going and passing on the weak genes, but what good does it do if a stronger bird makes it across the gulf, only to be taken out by a cell phone tower or skyscraper window--no genes whatsoever get passed on?

There's also a tourism aspect of it. How many of us have read the articles about researchers being on the oil platform on a magic night when thousands upon thousands of birds pass by. How many of us have thought about what it would be like to stroll on the deck of an oil platform to find cuckoos, warblers, tanagers and orioles just hanging out?

I wonder how long it will be before the owners of the oil platforms start to use birds, as well as fish as an excuse to keep them up when the oil runs dry?