An offshore crew's duty to stop after an archaeological discovery survived the 2025 reversal of BOEM's rule. The prescribed 305-metre radius and 72-hour reporting deadline disappeared from the restored provision.
That creates two ways to get a procedure revision wrong: delete the discovery instruction because the rule was reversed, or retain the old figures as though the replacement still prescribes them.
Congress's March 14, 2025 disapproval voided the 2024 rule. BOEM's April 14 conforming action restored an immediate halt within the discovery area and reporting to the Regional Director. If investigation found the resource significant, the Director would specify its protection. The paragraph printed neither the former distance nor its reporting interval.
The 2024 provision had specified both. Their disappearance identifies questions the revised crew instruction must resolve; it does not establish that no other project requirement supplies an answer.
A separate change occurred before work began. Under the 2024 text, plans proposing seabed disturbance needed a survey-based archaeological report, a reference to a qualifying previously submitted report, or evidence of sufficiently thorough prior identification acceptable to BOEM. A new report was not required in every case. The restored text instead made the report requirement depend on a written determination by the Regional Director that there was reason to believe a resource might exist.
The planning trigger and the discovery response therefore need separate treatment. An operator could encounter a resource even where the restored plan-stage trigger had not required a report; the discovery duty remained in the text.
This historical comparison cannot supply today's complete instructions for a particular lease. For the compliance owner updating a work package, it identifies the actual revision questions: what triggers the archaeological submission, and what currently authorizes the discovery area's extent and reporting instruction? Merely replacing the citation answers neither.