Saving Seafood

Massachusetts: Offshore Oil Drilling Sparks Early Opposition on Martha’s Vineyard

April 18, 2018 — Island environmental groups and state legislators are strongly opposing a plan by the Trump administration to open up North Atlantic waters to offshore oil and gas exploration.

The five-year drilling plan announced in early January by the U.S. Department of the Interior calls for drilling along East Coast federal waters from Georgia to Maine, including waters off Massachusetts.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission has gone on record early against the idea of drilling.

“Opening our coast to drilling and the potential for a dangerous spill is a reckless threat to our region,” wrote MVC executive director Adam Turner in a recent letter to Gov. Charlie Baker. “Any oil spill, even in a limited quantity, will have serious consequences to the Island and the region.”

Mr. Turner said he wanted to make it clear to the governor early on that the commission is opposed to the proposal.

“I’m concerned about what safeguards are in place to avoid an oil spill or contamination in the water,” Mr. Turner said. “What’s the impact on wildlife?”

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has also opposed the plan, saying that the drilling could threaten the state’s $7.3 billion fishing industry and 1,500 miles of coastline and raising the prospect of taking legal action.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

Interior secretary: ‘Opposition’ to offshore drill plan

April 9, 2018 — PLAINSBORO, N.J. — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday acknowledged there is “a lot of opposition” to President Donald Trump’s plan to open most of the nation’s coastline to oil and gas drilling.

Speaking at a forum on offshore wind energy in Plainsboro, New Jersey, Zinke touted Trump’s “all of the above” energy menu that calls for oil and gas, as well as renewable energy projects.

But he noted strong opposition to the drilling plan, adding there is little to no infrastructure in many of those areas to support drilling.

“There is a lot of opposition, particularly off the East Coast and the West Coast, on oil and gas,” Zinke said.

He said on the East Coast, only the Republican governors of Maine and Georgia have expressed support for the drilling plan, which has roiled environmentalists but cheered energy interests. Maine Gov. Paul LePage has endorsed the plan, but Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has hesitated to take a public position on it.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Post

President Trump Expands Wind Leases Off Martha’s Vineyard

April 9, 2018 — The Trump administration will expand wind energy leases off Martha’s Vineyard, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior announced Friday.

In a press release, Secretary Ryan Zinke said two more areas off Massachusetts totaling some 390,000 acres would go up for sale for future commercial wind farms. The lease area lies near a 300,000-acre swath of wind-rich deepwater ocean already designated for commercial wind farms, roughly 15 to 25 miles south of the Vineyard.

No wind farms have been built yet off Massachusetts, but a high-stakes business race is on as well-funded developers work their way through a dense bureaucractic process of permitting at the state and federal level. Construction could begin by 2019 and run through 2022.

The next key date in the permitting process is April 23, when bid winners will be announced for state-mandated energy contracts with utility providers. Tied to a 2016 law signed by Gov. Charlie Baker requiring state utility companies to buy 1,600 megawatts of power from alternative energy sources in the next decade, the energy contracts are critical for wind developers since they provide a way for wind farms to transmit electricity to consumers via the grid.

To date, three developers have been awarded leases to build utility-scale wind farms off the Vineyard: Vineyard Wind, Deepwater Wind and Baystate Wind.

Vineyard Wind is a partnership between Vineyard Power, the Island energy cooperative, and the Danish company Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which has an offshore wind development arm.

Deepwater Wind, based in Providence, R.I., has already launched the country’s first offshore wind farm off Block Island.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

National marine monument suit moves forward

March 22, 2018 — President Barack Obama is long gone from office, but the legal fight lives on against his use of the Antiquities Act to create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off the coast of southern New England.

A federal judge in Washington D.C. has lifted a 10-month stay on the lawsuit filed against the federal government by fishing stakeholders — including the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association — seeking to roll back recent uses of the Antiquities Act and block using the statute to create new national marine monuments in the future.

The order lifting the stay by U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, who granted the stay at the request of the federal defendants last May 12, will allow the lawsuit to continue.

The lifting of the stay was greeted warmly by fishing stakeholders.

“We’re optimistically excited about the prospect of moving forward so the fishing industry can regain fishing grounds it’s lost without fear of being evicted again,” Beth Casoni, executive director of the Masssachusetts Lobstermen’s Association said Wednesday.

Also, according to one of the lawyers for fishing stakeholders, the lifting of the stay places the Trump administration in a position where it either must act on recommendations from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reopen the area of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument to commercial fishing or defend Obama’s decision in court.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Massachusetts Senate declares opposition to New England offshore oil and gas drilling

February 23, 2018 — BOSTON — The Massachusetts Senate has registered its opposition to reopening any oil and gas exploration or drilling off the coast of New England.

A resolution passed by the Senate Thursday states that federal initiatives to reopen offshore drilling “threaten to jeopardize the environmental well-being of the Commonwealth, and more particularly, its coastal communities and waters.”

The measure asks the U.S. Department of the Interior to “take all possible action to protect the waters off the coast of the Commonwealth and New England, in particular Georges Bank, Stellwagen Bank, and Jeffreys Ledge, and to exempt these areas from oil exploration initiatives.”

The statement, co-authored by Sen. Mike Barrett, D-Lexington, and Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, comes days before the Bureau of Ocean Management plans a Feb. 27 public open house in Boston regarding its proposed National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

The Bureau of Ocean Management will soon seek environmental permits for its Jan. 9 draft plan to reopen fossil fuel exploration in nearly all ocean areas along the continental United States and Alaska. March 9 is the deadline for submitting public comments on the draft leasing document.

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Rhode Island: Ocean State Officials Pledge to Halt Offshore Drilling

February 13, 2018 — NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Rhode Island’s governor and members of Congress are calling for an all-out effort to oppose President Trump’s plan for offshore drilling along the Eastern seaboard. They warned of the environmental and economic risks to the state’s fishing and tourism industries. They urged the public to submit comments on the proposal to the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) and to show their opposition at a scheduled Feb. 28 public workshop in Providence.

Referencing the six commercial fishermen in the audience at at Feb. 12 press event, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he planned to advance a bill signed by all New England senators to ban offshore drilling off the New England coast. Whitehouse called the offshore drilling proposal a “dumb idea” and blamed the fossil-fuel industry for directing the Trump administration to enact it.

“This will not happen. Whatever it takes to prevent it, we will see takes place,” Whitehouse said.

Gov. Gina Raimondo promised to lobby governors of coastal states to pass resolutions opposing the offshore drilling plan.

“This is backwards. We ought to be moving forward for offshore wind farms, not backwards for offshore oil drilling,” she said.

Raimondo also restated her intent to have Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke follow through on his promise to meet her in Rhode Island and discuss the fossil-fuel project. Several East Coast governors called Zinke after he met with Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Scott apparently convinced Zinke to exempt his state from the offshore drilling plan. Although there is skepticism of the agreement after Zinke’s office backtracked somewhat on that promise and legal questions of such an exemption surfaced.

Whitehouse and Raimondo were asked whether a state or regional carbon tax would put economic pressure on Trump and the fossil-fuel industry. Both said they favor a national or multi-state fee on fossil fuels. However, Whitehouse said his carbon tax bill in the Senate won’t advance until the head of the Senate is a Democrat.

“The Republicans are keenly interested in trying to shovel this issue under the rug as much as they can to keep the fossil-fuel money flowing into their party. It’s a sad state of affairs,” Whitehouse said.

Raimondo said she favors advancing a carbon tax along with public pushback to offshore drilling.

Read the full story at ECORI

 

N.J. to Trump: Stay away from our ‘treasured coastal communities’

February 2, 2018 — The [Gov. Phil] Murphy administration has sent another signal to Washington that it does not want drilling off the Jersey Shore.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal joined attorneys general from 11 other states in sending a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, objecting to the new plan to drill for oil and natural gas throughout federal waters.

In the letter, the attorneys general express “deep concerns” and claim that the plan represents “disregard for vital state interests, economies, and resources.”

Grewal was joined by the attorneys general of North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia in the letter to Zinke. Each attorney general outlines concerns specific to their states.

Read the full story at NJ.com

 

Massachusetts: Baker forming group in opposition to offshore drilling

January 31, 2018 — Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday he’s working to build a coalition of eastern seaboard governors in opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to open the North Atlantic to offshore oil drilling.

Some governors of states along the coast have already reached out formally to the Department of Interior to express their opposition, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott won an exemption for his state. But while the Massachusetts Congressional delegation has called on Baker to speak up, the governor said he’s eyeing the Feb. 15 deadline for public comment.

“I would like to see if we can’t bring some of the other Republican and Democrat governors and maybe, with them, their delegations along, up and down the East Coast, so that’s really been our focus over the last few weeks,” Baker said during an interview on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio on Monday.

The Baker administration in June told Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that Massachusetts does not support opening areas of the North Atlantic adjacent to the state for oil and natural gas exploration. That position was stated in a letter pertaining to the federal government’s review of protected marine monument areas.

Zinke announced earlier this month a plan to make more than 90 percent of the national outer continental shelf available for oil and gas exploration.

Read the full story at Worcester Business Journal

 

NEFMC Takes Final Action on Deep-Sea Coral Amendment; Comments on Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling in North Atlantic

January 31, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has taken final action on its Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment and voted to submit the document to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for review and approval.

In June of 2017, the Council adopted coral protection zones for the Gulf of Maine. Yesterday, at its meeting in Portsmouth, NH, the Council, after extensive debate, approved a 600-meter minimum depth “broad zone” for the continental slope and canyons south of Georges Bank. Once the amendment is implemented, this zone – with one exception – will be closed to all bottom-tending gear, meaning both mobile gear such as trawls and dredges and fixed gear such as traps and gillnets. The Council approved an exemption for the Atlantic deep-sea red crab pot fishery.

The 600-meter minimum depth broad zone, known as Option 6 in the Coral Amendment, was the Council’s preferred alternative for the continental slope and canyons prior to public hearings. However, the Council postponed final action last June in order to consider an additional proposal put forward by environmental groups. Known as Option 7, the new proposal covered more bottom and included shallower depths, ranging between 300 meters and 550 meters. Option 7 would have prohibited mobile bottom-tending gear but not fixed gear.

The Council’s Habitat Plan Development Team, using trawl vessel monitoring system data to identify fishing grounds, edited the Option 7 boundary to reduce economic impacts.

Before making a final determination, the Council considered extensive analyses of:

  • Option 6, the 600-meter minimum zone
  • Option 7 as revised, the 300-meter to 550-meter zone
  • Option 6/7 combined with Option 7 for mobile bottom-tending gear and Option 6 for all bottom-tending gear. An exemption for the deep-sea red crab pot fishery was considered for all options.

In the end, the Council selected the 600-meter broad zone, which encompasses 25,153 square miles. This option, which also was recommended by the Habitat Committee and Advisory Panel, covers: 75% of the known coral within the zone; 75% of the areas highly or very highly suitable as habitat for soft corals; and 85% of the areas with slopes greater than 30°. It also has lower economic impacts on fishermen using mobile bottom-tending gear.

Gulf of Maine 

Here’s a recap of what the Council approved last June for the Gulf of Maine:

  • Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mt. Desert Rock – The Council adopted a discrete coral protection zone for each of these areas where mobile bottom-tending gear (trawls and dredges) will be prohibited. Other types of fishing gear will be allowed, including lobster traps/pots.
  • Jordan Basin DHRA – The Council designated a Dedicated Habitat Research Area in Jordan Basin on/around the 114 fathom bump site, which encompasses roughly 40 square miles. This designation is meant to focus attention on the coral habitats at this site. The Council believes additional research on corals and fishing gear impacts should be directed here. No fishing restrictions are proposed at this time.

The Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment also specifies that anyone conducting research activities in coral zones would be required to obtain a letter of acknowledgement from NMFS’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office.

Once the amendment is implemented, changes to the following provisions will be allowable through framework adjustments: (1) adding, revising, or removing coral protection zones; (2) changing fishing restrictions; and (3) adopting or changing special fishery programs.

Offshore and Oil Gas Drilling 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is soliciting comments through March 9, 2018 on its Draft National 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, which includes the North and Mid-Atlantic Planning Areas. The Council agreed to send a letter to BOEM recommending exclusion of these two areas from the five-year plan because oil and gas exploration and extraction activities in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf involve inappropriate risks that “may harm living marine resources and the communities that depend on them.” The draft plan proposes lease sales in 2021 and 2023 for the North Atlantic area and in 2020, 2022, and 2024 for the Mid-Atlantic area.

The New England Council previously submitted oil and gas development comments to BOEM and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on June 29, 2017 and August 15, 2017. In the August letter and reiterated in this next letter, the Council broke down its concerns into five categories, which involve the following:

  • Direct displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities in offshore environments;
  • Harm to sensitive, deep-water benthic habitats, including deep-sea corals, due to extraction activities;
  • Negative impacts on living marine resources due to highdecibel sounds emitted during seismic gas surveys and drilling operations, including potential harm to some of the 28 species managed by the New England Council;
  • Negative impacts to nearshore fish habitats due to infrastructure development needed to support an Atlantic oil and gas industry; and
  • Risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from oil and gas extraction and transport.

The Council also supported developing a report to spatially document the value of fisheries on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf. The report will be used when developing future comments related to both renewable and non-renewable offshore energy.

More Information

View the release in its entirety here.

 

Official: Plan to Exclude Florida From Drilling Isn’t Final

An Interior Department official says the Trump administration’s promise to exempt Florida from an offshore drilling plan is not a formal action.

January 22, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s promise to exempt Florida from an offshore drilling plan is not a formal action, an Interior Department official said Friday in a statement that Democrats said contradicted a high-profile announcement by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke has proposed opening nearly all U.S. coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling, but said soon after announcing the plan that he will keep Florida “off the table” when it comes to offshore drilling.

Zinke’s Jan. 9 statement about Florida “stands on its own,” said Walter Cruickshank, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, but there’s been no formal decision on the five-year drilling plan.

“We have no formal decision yet on what’s in, or out, of the five-year program,” Cruickshank told the House Natural Resources Committee at a hearing Friday.

Zinke’s announcement about keeping Florida off the table, made during a Tallahassee news conference with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, will be part of the department’s analysis as it completes the five-year plan, Cruickshank said.

Democrats seized on the comment to accuse Zinke of playing politics by granting the Republican governor’s request to exempt Florida while ignoring nearly a dozen other states that made similar requests.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News & World Report