It is hard to take delivery if you don't want to. These contracts have lots of safeguards to separate delivery from ownership.

There are lots of ways to have a contract, but one example of why this is done is if you have oil and on a slow boat. When the oil is loaded onto the boat the well owner wants to be paid, while the ship owner doesn't want to buy it, and the destination does not doesn't want to pay for it. This the ship will pay for the oil by selling a contract, the ship already knows where it is going, but they don't want to have ownership of the oil. By selling the contract on the same day they get their money back and don't lose money if oil goes down. Then they sell the oil on the other end and pay off the contract. Of course in the real world it is more complex but in general the destination is already known what isn't known is how much the oil will be worth when it gets there.

Note that I said hard to take delivery when you don't want it. Such things do happen despite safeguards. They are expensive mistakes for everyone (the ship delivering oil can't unload and so will miss the next dock while running for someplace that can take it), so there is a lot of checks in place but they can fail.

The producers aren't gonna dump it (at least not in the US) because that is a surefire way to not only have the EPA bend them over but to have the EPA bend them over with the blessing of public opinion. Nobody wants to have their company be associated with pictures of oil soaked wildlife.

If you're an oil producer, you don't need to "dump" oil in the surrounding environment. You can just pump it back into the oilfield you've been extracting it from.

This isn't really possible in the near term. You can't just hook up oil into your water injection system.

EPA isn’t enforcing right now.

This is obviously wrong. You cannot dump oil, and anyone found to be dumping will be prosecuted.

READ THE EPA STATEMENT..

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents...

> The enforcement discretion described in this temporary policy do not apply to any criminal violations or conditions of probation in criminal sentences.

...

> This policy does not apply to imports.

They are relaxing REPORTING requirements - not giving a free pass to anyone dumping whatever they want. Obviously.

It's good to provide accurate information but please don't use allcaps for emphasis. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

This is obviously wrong. The EPA has explicitly stated they will not be enforcing regulation. Source: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-sus...

From the memo that generated the news story you linked:

> IV. Accidental Releases Nothing in this temporary policy relieves any entity from the responsibility to prevent, respond to, or report accidental releases of oil, hazardous substances, hazardous chemicals, hazardous waste, and other pollutants, as required by federal law, or should be read as a willingness to exercise enforcement discretion in the wake of such a release.

If one wished to be nit-picky, one might note that the part you quote is explicitly about "accidental" releases, so arguably does not apply to the deliberate release that the originator of this thread branch was talking about. :-)

There is a separate note about criminal violations not facing “enforcement discretion”, which unless I'm mistaken covers pretty much any intentional release.

READ THE EPA STATEMENT..

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents...

> The enforcement discretion described in this temporary policy do not apply to any criminal violations or conditions of probation in criminal sentences.

...

> This policy does not apply to imports.

They are relaxing REPORTING requirements - not giving a free pass to anyone dumping whatever they want. Obviously.

Doesn't matter when they enforce, no one's taking the risk of a change in administration.

What if Trump loses?