Saving Seafood

Don’t expect oil drilling off Jersey Shore, Trump official tells N.J. Republicans

February 28, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Don’t expect to see oil rigs off the Jersey Shore.

That was the message the state’s Republican lawmakers walked away with following a meeting Tuesday with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

“If it’s not off the table, it will soon be off the table,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., one of four GOP representatives from the state who joined other Atlantic Coast lawmakers and Zinke at the U.S. Capitol.

President Donald Trump, overturning a five-year plan that excluded the Atlantic Coast until at least 2022, proposed opening almost the entire continental shelf to oil drilling.

Zinke plans more meetings with state officials on proposal, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has planned 23 public meetings, and those who cannot attend a session can comment at www.regulations.gov by submitted by March 9, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., said Zinke acknowledged that the area off the coast off New Jersey met none of the criteria for opening the area to oil drilling.

Read the full story at NJ.com

 

Massachusetts: Promise of jobs, revenue not muting foes of offshore drilling

February 27, 2018 — BOSTON — The Trump administration proposal to open new tracts of ocean to the oil industry could create “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” according to an offshore energy group whose president said the plan is part of a “larger push to increase the global competitiveness of America and to spur jobs and economic growth at home.”

But the prospect of drilling off the Massachusetts coast also brought together advocates on Monday who are often at loggerheads but are now pulling in the same direction, against the Trump administration’s plans.

Decades ago, when oil exploration at George’s Bank last occurred, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) joined together with the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives to fight the proposal, ultimately prevailing, and those groups and others are hoping for a repeat this time around.

“It was a remarkable moment,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at CLF, who said it is “ridiculous” that the idea has resurfaced.

“We knew this would not die completely,” said Angela Sanfilippo, of the Fishermen’s Wives, who said she saw the devastation an oil spill can bring to a fishing community when she visited New Orleans after Deepwater Horizon spewed fuel into the Gulf of Mexico eight years ago.

CLF often supports regulations on fishing that the industry opposes, but the two groups — and others — were on the same side for Monday’s event, organized by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey one day before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s hearing on the offshore drilling proposal in Boston.

The public meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. at Sheraton Boston Hotel is a “sham” because officials there will not take live testimony from the public and the meeting location was moved multiple times, according to Markey.

“We cannot allow George’s Bank to become Exxon’s Bank,” Markey said at Monday’s event, held at the New England Aquarium. The Trump proposal is an “invitation to disaster,” he said.

The Trump administration has proposed opening up waters to drilling and oil exploration, allowing companies to tap into some of the estimated 89.9 billion barrels of oil sitting undiscovered beneath the continental shelf. The idea has pitted food providers against fuel providers.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

North Carolina: Dozens board buses to Rally for Raleigh protesting offshore drilling

February 27, 2018 — Protestors are rallying in Raleigh Monday, speaking out against the Trump administration’s plan to open more waters to offshore drilling.

The federal government’s only scheduled public meeting in our state is happening until 7 p.m. Monday evening.

Officials with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are discussing expanding oil and gas exploration.

Meanwhile, several environmental groups have gathered to oppose the plan.

Thirteen buses from Nags Head, Morehead City and Wilmington hit the roads Monday for Rally for Raleigh.

About four dozen citizens boarded buses in the Port City Monday afternoon. Some were activists with organizations; others were just concerned citizens, afraid of what offshore drilling could do to a place they call home.

“It’s enabling to see there are that many other people that feel this strongly about supporting our livelihoods and our way of life here,” said Dee Cortiglio.

Cortiglio and her husband retired to Wilmington 12 years ago.

“You have no idea what could happen. The risk is just too great. It’s not worth it,” Cortiglio said. “We all came here to enjoy this area and feel so threatened with these new policies. It’s not right and it shouldn’t happen here.”

In January, Governor Roy Cooper said the state will sue the Trump administration if North Carolina isn’t given an exemption from the Interior Department’s plan to open up locations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to offshore oil and gas drilling.

Read the full story at WECT

 

Chefs heat up red snapper debate

February 27, 2018 — Priced at $32, the pan-roasted Gulf red snapper with coconut rice and Malaysian curry sauce is among the best-sellers at Carrollton Market in New Orleans.

But chef Jason Goodenough worries that it could someday disappear from his menu, if Congress goes too far in loosening regulations and allows more overfishing of the stock.

“On the macro level, my fear is that tourism is going to drop off because less and less Gulf seafood is available to us as chefs,” said Goodenough, named the 2017 chef of the year by New Orleans Magazine. “People come to New Orleans to eat, to drink and to hear music — food tourism is a major, major part of the fabric of the economy.”

Goodenough is one of 26 chefs, most of them from New Orleans, urging Congress to put the brakes on any proposed rollbacks of federal laws that protect fish populations.

Their latest target is the “Modern Fish Act,” which is set for a vote Wednesday by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Backers of S. 1520, sponsored by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and formally known as the “Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2017,” say it would give sports anglers more access to federal waters.

While many recreational anglers cheered the Trump administration for extending the Gulf red snapper season by 39 days last year, they regarded the move as a temporary fix. They’ve touted the “Modern Fish Act” as a permanent solution and a much-needed way to bring more flexibility to fisheries management (Greenwire, Dec. 19, 2017).

Opponents, including the chefs, say the bill would weaken federal protections and result in more overfishing, damaging stocks in the long run.

Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy in Baton Rouge, La., said it is “utter folly to think that chefs are interested in conservation.”

“I know that it’s going to be of a lot of interest that some chefs want to pick a fight — ‘bless their hearts’ is what my mother taught me to say,” he said. “But I don’t think any responsible person in America looks to chefs who profit from these fishery resources to be guiding any discussion on conservation.”

Recreational fishermen have long complained that the nation’s premier fisheries law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, has become too bureaucratic, fixated on quotas and catch limits.

Read the full story at E&E News

 

Massachusetts: Bay State fishing advocates oppose offshore drilling

February 26, 2018 — Frustrated by the Trump administration’s plans to potentially open areas off the Massachusetts coast to oil drilling, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey convened groups with sometimes divergent interests to collectively oppose the plan on Monday.

The oil industry’s use of controlled explosions to explore the seafloor kills and disrupts the ocean life, from plankton to the endangered right whale, said Scott Kraus, vice president and senior science adviser at the New England Aquarium. If the industry builds oil wells in the offshore fishing areas, that would put the area’s fishing industry at risk, said Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken at an event held at the aquarium.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Defenders of US Sea Grant ‘optimistic’ Congress will reject Trump cuts

February 26, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, expects a warm welcome from all of the members of Congress he sees when he visits here this week to argue for preservation of the US Sea Grant program among other things.

That was how he was received when he made a similar trip to Capitol Hill roughly a year ago, after President Donald Trump first advocated for zeroing out the funds, he said.

“As we walked around the Hill, all of the East Coast state congressmen we visited pointed out to us that Congress decides the budget, not the president,” he said, adding: “I feel optimistic.”

The White House again has put the Sea Grant program on the chopping block, advocating for the elimination of its $72 million in federal funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fiscal 2019 budget along with a number of other science measures, including especially those related to climate change.

In all, the Trump administration wants to cut 20% from NOAA’s $5.7 billion budget, leaving it with $4.6 bn in fiscal 2019, which starts on Oct. 1, 2018.

So Rheault — along with 16 of his colleagues from the East Coast shellfish community and some friends from the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association — will again be asking lawmakers to spare the program. Together they’ll log 40 meetings with agency and congressional offices as part of what is commonly referred to in Washington as a “fly-in.”

The program’s champions will get another chance to visit with members of Congress when James Hurley, the Sea Grant Association president, leads a group of university Sea Grant leaders to the Hill in conjunction with SGA’s March 7-8 meeting in Washington. Hurley is also head of the program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Trump’s offshore drilling proposal has a cost besides potential oil spills

February 23, 2018 — The Trump administration’s effort to open almost all of the U.S. outer continental shelf to drilling has rattled coastal communities fearful of oil-drenched beaches like those they saw after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

There’s another cost, though, of high-volume offshore oil and natural gas leasing borne by the public, even if nothing is spilled. A new analysis Thursday says that the federal government — and therefore U.S. taxpayers —  isn’t getting its money’s worth from oil and gas companies pumping publicly owned fossil fuels from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico.

By law, the government is supposed to get “fair market value” for leasing offshore tracts of oil and gas. But the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a government watchdog group, found that companies rarely compete for leases.

As a result, the federal government got less than 3 percent per acre in its most recent lease sales, in August of last year, than it did before 1983, a new POGO analysis found. The findings suggest that for years the government has gotten short-changed when it comes to oil and gas lease sales. As the Trump administration tries to expand offshore drilling, the problem may only get worse.

Here’s the rub: That marked decline isn’t really the result because of President Trump’s policies. It stems all the way back to the Reagan administration.

Read the full analysis at the Washington Post

 

 

The Trump Administration Just Got Sued Over an “Unusual Mortality Event” in the Ocean

February 23, 2018 — On January 22, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration got word of a juvenile, North Atlantic right whale carcass floating off the coast of Virginia. Later identified as whale #3893, the 39-foot, 10-year-old female was towed to shore, where researchers examined her partially-decomposed remains. A few days later, preliminary necropsy findings indicated that the whale died of “chronic entanglement,” meaning it was caught in rope or line, according to a report from NOAA.

It was the first right whale to die in 2018, but it comes on the heels of the deaths of 17 right whales in the North Atlantic in 2017—a record setting number that is more than all right whale mortalities in the five previous years combined. NOAA researchers are calling the trend an “unusual mortality event”—a particularly concerning phenomenon, as North Atlantic right whales are an endangered species. There are only about 450 left in the wild, according to NOAA, and at the current rate, scientists predict the species could be functionally extinct in fewer than 25 years.

NOAA hasn’t determined the cause of the “unusual mortality event,” but some are looking right at Washington, and at NOAA itself. A new lawsuit, filed January 18 in US District Court in Washington, D.C., argues specifically that the Trump administration is at least partly responsible for failing to adequately address this epidemic.

Between 2010 and 2016, 85 percent of diagnosed whale deaths were the result of entanglement, typically in commercial fishing gear. The plaintiffs—the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Humane Society—allege that President Trump’s Department of Commerce, of which NOAA is a branch, is in violation of the 1973 Endangered Species Act and the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act over their management of the North Atlantic lobster fishery, which “frequently entangles right whales,” according to the suit. Under the Endangered Species Act, the plaintiffs point out, any action, direct or indirect, by a federal agency must not be “likely to jeopardize” any endangered or threatened species.

Read the full story at Mother Jones

 

Trump’s plans to expand offshore drilling face headwind on Atlantic coast

February 22, 2018 — WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s bid to open Atlantic waters to offshore drilling has sparked bipartisan opposition in the states with the largest oil and gas reserves off their coasts, presenting unexpected obstacles to the long-held designs of the energy industry.

In recent years, political leaders in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina had supported oil and gas drilling off their coasts, envisioning high-paying jobs and increased tax revenues. But new governors in the three states – two Democrats and a Republican – have all reversed the positions of their predecessors, fearing the potential impact on beaches, fisheries and tourism industries.

“This last election we’ve seen a significant shift at the leadership level,” said David Holt, president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, a trade group representing large energy users and producers. “If you look at the last 10 years, the majority of the governors and the public had been supportive.”

For oil executives in Houston, an international center of the offshore oil and gas sector, the Atlantic coast is a new frontier that could potentially mean significant profits in the decades ahead. Most of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, have a major presence here, employing thousands of people, as do firms specializing in offshore drilling and services, including TechnipFMC, National Oilwell Varco, McDermott International and Transocean.

But the recent shift in political and public sentiment represents a very real threat to their plans.

The oil and gas industry has sought access to U.S. Atlantic waters for years, hoping to find rich oil and gas fields similar to those off the coasts of Nigeria and Ghana. In Trump – who proclaims “energy dominance” almost as frequently as “Make America great again” – the industry believed it had found the key to achieving its goal.

Energy companies came close two years ago when former President Barack Obama considered allowing oil and gas development in Atlantic waters. They had the support of Republicans and Democrats, including Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2016, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and fund raiser for Hillary and Bill Clinton, but Obama ultimately decided against an expansion of offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle

 

Interior to Hold Massive Sale of Offshore Oil and Gas Leases

February 21, 2018 — The Interior Department announced Friday that the sale of leases on 77.3 million acres off the Southeast coast for oil and gas exploration will occur on March 21.

The sale, which Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said is the largest in U.S. history, will consist of leases off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. It includes all currently unleased areas in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Responsibly developing our offshore energy resources is a major pillar of President Trump’s American Energy Dominance strategy,” Bernhardt said. “A strong offshore energy program supports tens of thousands good paying jobs and provides the affordable and reliable energy we need to heat homes, fuel our cars, and power our economy.”

Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a New Orleans-based nonprofit that is heavily involved in environmental issues asked “How stupid can we be?” when she learned of the scheduled lease sale.

“The Gulf Coast is consistently nailed by hurricanes and yet our government insists on an energy strategy that exacerbates these hurricanes,” she said.

“A real energy strategy would be one that pursues renewables full speed ahead. Their so-called energy strategy is really a scheme for corrupt politicians to enrich themselves and their cronies,” Rolfes added.

Raleigh Hoke, campaign director of the Gulf Restoration Network, also took a dim view of the Interior Department announcement.

“We are disappointed that this Administration is moving forward with yet another lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico while simultaneously rolling back key safety measures to protect workers and the environment,” Hoke said. “Oil spills and accidents are an everyday occurrence in the Gulf, and we’re still at risk of a major catastrophe like the 2010 BP drilling disaster. We need stronger safety requirements, not weaker, and an end to all new offshore leasing in the Gulf.”

“Trump’s auctioning off this massive amount of our ocean while at the same time proposing to rollback important environmental and safety requirements,” agreed Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service