Saving Seafood

R.I.’s governor urges opposition to Atlantic offshore drilling plan

February 9, 2018 — Gov. Gina Raimondo is urging Rhode Islanders to speak up against a federal plan that would open waters off the state’s coast to drilling for oil and gas.

In an interview in her State House office, she said the Trump administration’s plan to overturn an Obama-era ban on offshore drilling along the nation’s East Coast poses a threat to Rhode Island’s commercial fishing industry and the beaches along the state’s 400 miles of coastline.

Raimondo said she requested the meeting with The Providence Journal to raise public awareness about the drilling plan. It was the first time in her tenure as governor that she has asked for such a meeting in regard to an environmental issue.

“I find the whole thing to be really quite alarming,” she said. “This might happen if we don’t oppose it loudly enough.”

In January 1996, the barge North Cape spilled 828,000 gallons of home heating oil off Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, killing thousands of shore birds and millions of lobsters.

It is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in Rhode Island history, but the size of the spill was relatively small. The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in Alaska totaled 11 million gallons of crude while the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill may have released up to 20 times that amount into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The greatest concern would be an oil spill,” Raimondo said. “I was in high school when Exxon Valdez happened so I still remember that very vividly. The BP oil spill seems like it was yesterday. That could happen here. I think Rhode Islanders need to know that.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically-recoverable oil on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Less than a tenth of the total potential resources are on the Atlantic coast.

The proposal released by the Department of the Interior in January would take effect from 2019 to 2024. Lease sales for the North Atlantic region would take place in 2021.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

 

California says will block crude oil from Trump offshore drilling plan

February 9, 2018 — SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will block the transportation through its state of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.

California’s plan to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the most forceful step yet by coastal states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing.

Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.

“I am resolved that not a single drop from Trump’s new oil plan ever makes landfall in California,” Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, chair of the State Lands Commission and a Democratic candidate for governor, said in an emailed statement.

The commission sent a letter on Wednesday to the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) urging the bureau’s program manager Kelly Hammerle to withdraw the draft proposal, saying the public did not have an adequate opportunity to provide input on the plan.

”It is certain that the state would not approve new pipelines or allow use of existing pipelines to transport oil from new leases onshore,” the commission wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.

California has clashed repeatedly with President Donald Trump’s administration over a range of other issues since last year, from climate change to automobile efficiency standards to immigration.

The Interior Department last month announced its proposal to open nearly all U.S. offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, sparking protests from coastal states, environmentalists and the tourism industry.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

East Coast of U.S. Emerging Into a Hotbed for Offshore Wind

February 7, 2018 — Atlantic coast states might be protesting President Trump’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling, but they’re increasingly embracing a different kind of seaborne energy: wind.

States bordering the outer continental shelf are looking for carbon-free electricity, even as the Trump administration rolls back rules requiring it.

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that his state will aim for 3,500 megawatts of installed offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 1 million homes. Massachusetts has a goal to build 1,600 MW of offshore wind power by 2027, and New York has committed to 2,400 MW by 2030.

At the same time, wind technology is quickly advancing, thanks to its popularity in Europe. Ten countries across Europe had deployed 12,600 MW of offshore wind power by the end of 2016. In the United States, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued 13 wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast. In late 2016, the first offshore wind farm in the United States came online about 4 miles off the coast of Block Island, R.I.

It’s unclear how the growth in offshore wind might be affected by Trump’s plan to open nearly all U.S. waters to oil and gas drilling.

But there are hints that the two types of development could come into contact on the open water.

According to BOEM’s draft proposed 2019-24 offshore oil and gas leasing plan, any drilling off the Atlantic Seaboard would have to be “coordinated” with current and future offshore wind development. The agency predicts that more wind projects are likely to be built between 2019 and 2024, when oil and gas lease sales are slated to be held.

Experts said it’s unlikely there would be direct competition for the same slice of ocean between the two industries. But that’s a hard question to answer.

Kevin Book, managing director of research for ClearView Energy Partners LLC, said it’s too early to know how offshore wind and oil and gas development might interact off the East Coast. Historically, offshore wind has been a nascent industry, and no one has drilled for oil in the Atlantic for decades. It’s been so long that developers have little idea what type of oil reserves lie under the sea, or if oil companies will want to tap them.

Read the full story from Scientific American/E&E news at IEEFA

 

Opponents, supporters react to Trump’s offshore drilling plan

February 6, 2018 — Environmentalists, fishermen, and state governments are signaling their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed plan to reopen the ocean off Cape Cod and New England to oil and gas exploration.

“We are skeptical of anything the Trump Administration is doing in the marine environment or anything they are proposing to do,” said Conservation Law Foundation Vice President Priscilla Brooks.

A 2016 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report estimated nearly 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas existed in mostly unexplored areas of the U.S. continental shelf. The new push for fossil fuel exploration and recovery was announced Jan. 4 with the unveiling of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. It is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to make the U.S. more energy independent.

Currently, offshore fossil fuel exploration is controlled by a BOEM plan finalized near the end of the Obama presidency. Obama invoked a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to give what he said would be permanent protection from drilling to the continental shelf from Virginia to Maine.

But there were doubts that Obama’s use of the 1953 law would hold up in court, and the new plan is meant to replace the current one. International Association of Drilling Contractors President Jason McFarland hailed the inclusion of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and an expansion of Gulf of Mexico drilling areas as an important step in achieving the goal of U.S. energy dominance in the world.

“IADC has long argued for access to areas that hold potential for oil and gas development,” McFarland wrote in comments last month, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate of a 48 percent growth in worldwide energy demand over the next 20 years. “The number and scale of the recoverable resources is large, and can lead to thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in investment.”

But the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and the various fishermen’s associations have panned the proposal. Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council approved a comment letter to BOEM that requested Mid-Atlantic and Northern Atlantic lease areas be excluded from the exploration and drilling.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

North Carolina governor seeks offshore drilling exemption in Zinke meeting

February 5, 2018 — North Carolina’s governor said he had a good conversation on Saturday with the interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, regarding plans to expand drilling for gas and oil off the state’s coast.

Roy Cooper, a Democrat, wants the Republican administration to give him an exemption similar to that offered to the Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott.

Last month, Zinke told Scott Florida’s waters would remain closed under Donald Trump’s five-year plan, which would open 90% of the nation’s offshore reserves to development by private companies.

Interior officials later said Zinke’s promise was not a formal plan and the proposal was still under review.

At least 10 other governors from both parties have asked Zinke to remove their states from plans to expand offshore drilling from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic and Pacific.

Henry McMaster, the Republican governor of South Carolina, had a meeting on Friday with Zinke, his staff reported. Zinke did not meet with reporters after either meeting.

Cooper said he spent an hour talking to Zinke, telling him drilling could cause unrecoverable damage to the state’s $3bn tourism and fishing industries.

“We told him there is no 100% safe method to drill for oil and gas off the coast, particularly in our area off of North Carolina that sees nor’easters, that sees hurricanes,” Cooper said.

“We don’t call it the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’ for nothing, it would be catastrophic if there were to be an oil spill.

Read the full story at The Guardian

 

Attorneys general urge offshore drilling plan’s cancellation

February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.

“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”

Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.

The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Pruitt’s EPA puts brakes on Pebble Mine proposal in Bristol Bay, Alaska

January 31, 2018 — Activists fighting a proposed gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska breathed a sigh of relief on Friday, 26 January, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upheld an Obama-era declaration that the proposed Pebble Mine, which would sit in the watershed for the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run, could cause irreversible harm to area fisheries.

Fishermen, native groups, and conservationists fought against the mine proposal for years, and won a temporary victory with a 2014 EPA ruling that stated mining could lead to “significant and irreversible harm” to local fishing grounds. But after years of eyeing the site, the project’s main backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, filed for its first federal application in December 2017, just a month after President Donald Trump was elected, and fanned fresh concerns with activists opposing the mine.

EPA head Scott Pruitt issued a statement Friday that the order does not block the mine outright, but does shelve the permitting process until further environmental impact reviews can be conducted.

“It is my judgement at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” Pruitt said in the statement. “Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection. Today’s action allows the EPA to get the information needed to determine what specific impacts the proposed mining project will have on those critical resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Trump has proposed offshore drilling in the Atlantic. Here’s what it means for N.J.

January 24, 2018 — When President Trump’s administration announced plans earlier this month to reconsider drilling off the Atlantic coast, officials and community leaders up and down the Jersey Shore began digging in for a fight they thought they’d won in 2016. Here are the basic facts behind the plan and the reasons why so many groups are against the proposal.

Trump’s plan: Drill baby drill

Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed opening nearly all federal waters to offshore drilling. The federal waters would be divided into sections and then the leases to those sections would be auctioned off to oil companies. Under the proposal, 25 of the government’s 26 planning areas would be opened up for 47 potential lease sales.

New Jersey would be part of the North Atlantic section, and leases for areas off the Jersey Shore would be auctioned off in 2021 and 2023.

“Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy security, and it provides billions of dollars to fund the conservation of our coastlines, public lands and parks,” Zinke said in a press release announcing the plan.

Who supports this plan?

Only one governor on the Atlantic Coast — Paul LePage of Maine, pictured above — has expressed approval of the plan. The Maine governor has said that he supports the plan because he believes it will bring jobs to his state and lower energy costs for Maine residents.

In a December 2013 report, the American Petroleum Institute — a group that advocates for the expansion of oil and natural development nationwide — estimated that offshore drilling could bring more than 8,000 jobs to New Jersey and bring in $515 million in revenue for the state government.

Uncertain potential for profit

Oil and gas companies could stand to profit from drilling off the Jersey Shore, but only if they find enough oil out there.

The last offshore exploration near the Garden State was in the 1970s and 1980s, when companies like Texaco and Tenneco drilled wells near the Hudson Canyon, a little less than 100 miles east of Atlantic City.

According to reports filed with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the exploration found no significant oil deposits and small amounts of natural gas reserves.

Has there been drilling off of the shore before?

Technically yes, but the exploratory drilling of the 1970s and 1980s was the farthest that the process has ever gotten. No lease sales have occurred in the Atlantic since 1983.

In 2017, a BOEM assessment estimated that the Atlantic contained an between 1.15 billion and 9.19 billion barrels of oil, a fraction of the estimated 76.69 billion to 105.59 billions barrels throughout all federal waters. According to the same assessment, the North Atlantic is estimated to hold between 0.06 billion and 5.11 billion barrels.

Read the full story at the NJ.com

 

Supreme Court says bearded seal still threatened, despite legal battle

January 23, 2018 — While the federal government was shut down on Monday, the federal courts were still making decisions.

The U.S Supreme Court decided to keep the bearded seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — rejecting an oil and gas industry challenge to the animal’s protection status.

The marine mammal was listed in 2012, due to melting sea ice. But the Alaska Oil and Gas Association or AOGA and the American Petroleum Institute thought the listing was premature.

Joshua Kindred, an environmental counselor at AOGA, said he was “disappointed” in the supreme court’s decision.

He said the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t provide enough evidence to warrant a listing.

“They didn’t ever really show from a scientific point of view why the seasonal sea ice was so critical to their long-term health of the species,” he said.

Kindred said there also wasn’t sufficient guidance for a plan moving forward. He said excessive critical habitat designations can slow oil and gas development.

The Center for Biological Diversity has fought to keep the bearded seal’s protection status.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

Opposition mounts in Rhode Island to proposed offshore drilling go-ahead

A public information session Thursday on the Trump Administration’s proposal to open up the nation’s coastal waters to fossil fuel extraction has been canceled.

January 22, 2018 — PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A decade ago, when Rhode Island set out to find the most appropriate places for energy development in its coastal waters, offshore drilling was never contemplated as a possibility.

But now after creating a landmark ocean zoning plan and using it to guide the development of the first offshore wind farm in the United States, Rhode Island is facing the possibility of fossil fuel companies drilling for oil and gas off the coast.

On Thursday, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was scheduled to hold a public information session in Providence on the Trump administration’s proposal to lift Obama-era regulations and open up the nation’s coastal waters to fossil fuel extraction.

But on Monday morning that session was canceled.

The meeting was to be one of nearly two dozen scheduled in the coming weeks around the country.

The drilling proposal has met with widespread opposition from elected officials and environmental groups in Rhode Island.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal