Offshore drilling Archives - Page 13 of 19

In New Jersey, opponents of offshore drilling gear up for a fight

February 15, 2018 — Jim Lovgren is a third-generation fisherman and captains the Shadowfax. At the Fisherman’s Coop in Point Pleasant New Jersey recently, he watched as about a half-dozen men sorted freshly caught scup — or porgies — into bins.

“These fish they’ll be put in a cooler by tonight,” he said. “There could be 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of fish on the docks today. They will all be on their way to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. We ship anywhere from Canada down past North Carolina.”

Lovgren grew up trawling the waters off Sandy Hook. He says the fishery is already stressed from rising ocean temperatures. While there used to be dozens of fishing boats here, Lovgren said today there’s only a handful. He worries that if oil and gas companies drill offshore, he’ll be put out of business.

“Blackback flounders are just about extinct in this area here,” he said. “That was a major fishery. yellowtail flounders, codfish, lobsters are disappearing off the Jersey coast and it’s all because the water’s getting too warm.”

Lovgren knows that burning fossil fuels is connected to climate change, warming oceans and his disappearing fish. Still, he said, he needs fossil fuel to trawl the ocean floor.

“Look, a fishing boat, it runs on diesel fuel. You have to have energy. We have to have energy.”

But President Trump’s offshore drilling proposal is an immediate threat to his livelihood, and he’s gearing up to fight it.

Lovgren, along with other fishermen, environmentalists, realtors, and local business owners, descended on a hotel near Trenton Thursday voicing their unified opposition to drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of New Jersey.

The public meeting,hosted by federal officials from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, comes as the Trump Administration has proposed opening up the entire East Coast to offshore exploration.

But the proposal has little support along the Jersey coast.

“You start putting a bunch of oil rigs out there and it takes away places that we can tow, where we can fish,” Lovgren said. “The main concern is an oil spill.”

Talk to anyone who makes their living along the Jersey shore, whether it’s selling salt water taffy or renting shore houses, and they’ll tell you they don’t want another Deepwater Horizon along the East Coast. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana in 2010 spilled an estimated 171 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, decimating the fisheries and driving away tourists.

“You know if we had a Deepwater Horizon spill down in Delaware,” Lovgren said, “it’s going to come right up off the Jersey shore. It’s going to wash right into Long Island onto the beach. It could be hitting Cape Cod and Nantucket. Now that could be devastating.”

Lovgren voted for President Trump, and still supports him. But not his proposal. He worries seismic testing, which is used to find the oil and gas reserves, would hurt whales and dolphins.

He’s also concerned about potential smaller leaks that don’t make headlines.

And he’s not alone.

Read the full story at NPR’s StateImpact Pennsylvania

A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries

February 13, 2018 — ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.

It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.

Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.

Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.

The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into equally abundant Japanese fisheries.

Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.

“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a huge task — probably next to impossible.”

For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.

Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination; they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely monitor fish coming into markets.

Read the full story at the New York Times

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

Massachusetts: Local fishing stakeholders marshal opposition to drilling proposal

February 12, 2018 — So the Winter Olympics are rolling on the Korean peninsula and everybody seems to be on their best behavior and we’re all still alive to tell the tale. So that’s a good thing.

Here’s another good thing. You might have noticed we have coverage in today’s Gloucester Daily Times and on gloucestertimes.com of the double-showing Saturday of the fishing documentary “Dead in the Water” at the Cape Ann Museum.

Both screenings were sold out. But what was really interesting was the composition of the crowds. These weren’t the usual faces when it comes to Gloucester fishing. These weren’t the folks you see at the New England Fishery Management Council meetings or at other public forums. These weren’t permit holders and guys who work on boats.

The audiences for both screenings featured a cross-sampling of the Cape Ann community concerned enough about one of the region’s iconic-if-imperiled industries to give up a chunk of their Saturday to watch the film and begin to understand the withering complexities of the fishing crisis.

So, good for them. And good for the Cape Ann Museum for stepping up to host the screenings and subsequent panel discussions.

As an aside, we must concede we’re really not much for the Winter Games here at FishOn.

We like the skiing and love the hockey when the best players in the world are playing. But ixnay on the curling and skating and luge (Look, either sit down like a normal person or at least lay down so you know where you’re going.)

And don’t get us started on the biathalon. Ski for a while and then stop and shoot. Why? It all seems rather arbitrary. Why not have them ski for a while and then change a tire or grout some tile?

Willin’ to be drilling?

Things should get nice and toasty at the Hyatt Regency in Boston on the afternoon of Feb. 27 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management hosts a public hearing on the Trump administration’s proposal to open the ocean floor off New England to potential drilling and exploration for gas, oil and, for all we know, wolfram.

It’s a sweeping proposal, potentially opening up more than 90 percent of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf to drilling and other invasive exploration.

More to the point, the plan is extraordinary iffy for only two reasons:

Most people — you know, everybody not scurrying around to scoop up mineral rights and leases — hate it and it has the superhero power of uniting the commercial fishing industry, environmentalists, the management councils and the recreational fishing industry in the same fight. On the same side.

Local fishing stakeholders, including the omnipresent Angela Sanfilippo of the Fishing Partnership and Support Services (as well as the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association) are calling out the hordes to attend the hearing and marshal opposition.

So go, make thy own self heard.

Ornery down below the border line

Heading to Myrtle Beach soon for a little break in the action? Nice. Believe it or not there’s one restaurant named Mrs. Fish and another named Mr. Fish. They’re unaffiliated and they’re both really good.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

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

Washington Gov. Inslee formally objects to federal coastal oil/gas proposal

February 8, 2018 — Gov. Jay Inslee has formally asked the Trump Administration to remove the state from federal plans “to open waters off our coast to oil and gas drilling.”

And state Attorney General Bob Ferguson has said the state will sue the federal government if Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke continues to support the proposal while removing Florida from waters that would be open for the same National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2019-2024.

Inslee made his request in writing on Monday after an Olympia news conference with statements from a group that included Ocean Shores Mayor Crystal Dingler, Quinault Indian Nation representative Gina James, and Larry Thevik, president of the Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen’s Association and an Ocean Shores resident.

In a letter to Zinke, Insleee said: “I have stated unequivocally that opening the Pacific Coast to new oil and gas drilling for the first time in decades poses grave danger to our state’s unique recreation, tourism, shipping, military and fishing industries, threatening thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue each year.”

Read the full story at North Coast News

Virginia Beach wants the same protection from offshore drilling Florida was promised

February 8, 2018 — Leaders want the local coastline taken off a newly expanded list of places open for offshore drilling.

City Council members approved a resolution Tuesday reiterating the city’s opposition to offshore drilling. It also asks for congressional representatives to help secure the same promise from the federal government as Florida, which was assured that it would be “off the table” for drilling.

The White House proposed a five-year offshore leasing program last month that would open most of the East Coast to drilling. The plan isn’t final, and a public hearing will be held in Richmond Feb. 21.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

Northeast Fishery Managers Want East Coast To Remain Closed To Drilling

February 8, 2018 — Governor Chris Sununu says it looks unlikely new offshore drilling would affect New Hampshire, but regional fishery managers are still worried.

The U.S. Department of the Interior says it wants to open most of the nation’s coastline to new oil and gas leases. Sununu opposes drilling off New Hampshire’s Seacoast, and says Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke assured him the North Atlantic won’t be high priority.

“They have to go through the public process and everything, so they couldn’t officially cut us off the list,” Sununu told reporters on a press call last week. “But it was clear that we were a low-target area for them and that our feelings on the matter would be strongly considered.”

Still, New England’s federal fishery management council says even surveying for oil and gas – let alone drilling and transporting it – could hurt the East Coast’s fishing industry.

The council got an update on offshore energy issues at their first meeting of 2018, last week in Portsmouth, and voted to urge federal regulators to take the whole Atlantic coast out of consideration.

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

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

Environmental groups protest oil exploration

February 7, 2018 — Surrounded by protest signs against drilling for oil off Delaware’s coastline, environmentalists and other concerned citizens from across the state gathered in Dover to voice their concerns over a proposal by the federal government to open East Coast waters to offshore drilling.

In early January, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said the majority of federal waters could be open to offshore oil and gas exploration if a revised National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program is accepted. The five-year leasing program runs from 2019 to 2024.

Organized by Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute Executive Director Suzanne Thurman, the Jan. 18 protest attracted nearly three dozen people who packed into a small conference room of the Holiday Inn.

Among them was Lewes Mayor Ted Becker. Pointing to Sussex County’s two strongest industries, agriculture and tourism, he said an accident would affect everyone. There’s a lot of concern about what this potentially could mean, Becker said.

The rally occurred as the federal government’s Bureau of Energy Management was hosting a public meeting in the hotel’s large conference room. It was one of 23 meetings scheduled throughout the country. A couple of days before the Dover meeting, BOEM staff met in Annapolis.

Beyond the obvious potential environmental impacts, speakers also addressed other issues, like employee safety and styles of oil platforms.

John Doerfler, representing Delaware Surfrider, said the proposed draft puts oil company employees at great risk because it rolls back safety measures. “They’re putting the lives of the men and women who work for those companies at risk, just so they can fatten their pockets,” Doerfler said.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette