May 9, 2019 — Mayors from along the North Carolina coast are discussing the costs of offshore oil drilling if something goes wrong.
About a dozen mayors from Duck to Topsail Beach are meeting Wednesday in Manteo to discuss their worries about offshore oil and gas exploration. Opponents say that one future oil spill could destroy the state’s $4 billion fishing business and badly dent the state’s $20 billion tourism industry.
May 3, 2019 — All 10 U.S. senators in coastal New England reintroduced a proposal Friday to bar oil and gas drilling from the region’s shores.
The group said President Trump’s administration was stalling on the release of a new draft of its five-year offshore leasing plan. The group of senators, led by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, said that means the Atlantic continental shelf off New England is still at risk of being opened up to drilling.
The senators said drilling off New England would be bad for the economy, tourism, wildlife and the environment. New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said the region’s coast needs to be “off limits.”
The senators said tourism, fishing and recreation generate more than $17 billion for New England annually, according to the National Ocean Economic Program, and it would harm the five coastal states to jeopardize that revenue with drilling.
April 29, 2019 — The Trump administration has put a suspension on plans to expand offshore drilling off the North Carolina coast, leading to mixed reactions from the state fishing industry.
Randy Robinson, a representative of Brunswick County on the N.C. Fisheries Association Board of Directors thinks that the presence of offshore drilling “isn’t necessarily a bad idea.“ He considers that offshore drilling could play a role in increasing the net amount of jobs for North Carolinians.
Additionally, Robinson blames the N.C. Wildlife Federation for causing more damage than offshore drilling would do. He explains that the organization’s push to reduce trawls and limit the length of nets for fishing shrimp has negatively affected commercial fishing across the state’s coast.
April 26, 2019 — The Trump administration is suspending plans to expand offshore drilling, including plans to drill off Georgia after a recent court ruling blocked drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the Wall Street Journal.
Bernhardt said the agency would delay indefinitely its five-year plan for oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf as the case goes through the appeals process.
“By the time the court rules, that may be discombobulating to our plan,” Bernhardt told the Wall Street Journal in a report published Thursday. The plans had been expected to be released in the near future.
April 22, 2019 — North Carolina’s coastal regulatory board says risks associated with offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling off the Atlantic coast aren’t worth threats to the tourism and fishing economies and the environment.
The state Coastal Resources Commission approved a resolution this week opposing the idea.
President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing permits to allow testing for possible drilling sites off the Atlantic coast.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Connecticut Post
April 18, 2019 — Even as the Trump administration has taken steps to expand offshore oil drilling, a new report shows that thousands of oil spills are still happening and that workers in the oil and gas industry are still dying on the job.
The report comes from Oceana, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the oceans, which has sued the federal government to stop seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. The blasting is the first step needed to allow offshore drilling, when seismic airguns are used to find oil and gas deep under the ocean. Every state along the Atlantic coast has opposed the blasting, worried that spills could hurt tourism and local fisheries. Some scientists say the testing could also hurt marine life, including the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale. The group tied its report, released Thursday, to the ninth anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to show what has been happening since the government promised to hold the industry accountable to higher safety standards.
April 11, 2019 — Hilcorp will delay a planned seismic survey in Lower Cook Inlet this summer until after the peak of the summer season.
The Houston-based company had planned to conduct a 3-D seismic survey in federal waters off Homer, where it holds leases on 14 federal oil and gas lease tracts. The seismic survey would have covered eight of the lease blocks, according to a survey plan the company submitted to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
However, a number of snags held up the process. The company says the delay is in part due to holdups during the lengthy partial federal government shutdown, which spanned the new year and lasted more than a month.
Hilcorp also says it will delay its planned work until after the height of the fishing and tourist season. Those two industries are primary drivers of the economy in Homer and the surrounding area. Homer attracts tourists from all over the world each summer, many of whom come to fish for the region’s famously abundant Pacific halibut. A large commercial fleet based in Homer and the surrounding communities also fishes for halibut between March and November and for Pacific salmon during the summer season.
Hilcorp external affairs manager Lori Nelson did not give a precise date when the company plans to take up the seismic work again, but that the company understands that “the waters of Lower Cook Inlet are a shared resource.”
“We are actively engaged in discussions with our contractor to delay the survey,” she said in an email. “Our commitment to keep the community’s interests and concerns at the forefront will continue as we work to revise our schedule and work plan.”
April 1, 2019 — A freshman Shore congressman has introduced a bill to ban offshore drilling and seismic testing off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
The Coastal and Marine Economies Protection Act, proposed by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat representing most of South Jersey and the southern half of the state’s coastal areas, and Rep. Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, would permanently ban oil and gas leasing.
“Our local economy is dependent on fishing, tourism and wildlife watching – the bottom line is offshore oil and gas drilling isn’t worth the risk,” Van Drew said. “It is time to get rid of the harmful and dangerous practice of offshore drilling once and for all.”
The congressman expects the Department of Interior to include both coasts in its next five-year Oil and Gas Leasing Program.
The National Marine Fisheries Service authorized permits late last year under the Marine Mammal Protection Act for five companies to use air guns for seismic surveys from Delaware to central Florida.
March 28, 2019 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration is seeking to remove a seal species from the federal Endangered Species Act, a request which may have ramifications for the future of offshore oil drilling in Alaska.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Tuesday that it was petitioning the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service to delist the ringed seal. The move has support from the North Slope Borough, Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope.
While acknowledging the decline of the seals’ sea ice habitat, documented last year by NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, the Fish and Game statement noted that the ringed seal “continues to occupy the entire circumpolar Arctic, with an abundant population numbering in the millions.” It also questioned the availability of scientific data for the foreseeable future extending to the year 2100, as mentioned in the ringed-seal declaration.
“The best available scientific information now available indicates ringed seals are resilient and adaptable to varying conditions across their enormous range and are likely to adapt to habitat conditions that change over time,” state officials wrote.
NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle confirmed Tuesday afternoon that the state’s petition had been received. Its arrival triggers a 90-day deadline for NOAA to “publish a finding in the Federal Register as to whether the petition presents substantial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted.”
March 25, 2019 — The Atlantic Ocean is staring down the barrel of an air gun, and its blast could reverberate into the Chesapeake Bay.
Despite outcry from coastal communities and most East Coast states, the Trump administration is moving forward with allowing five companies to perform seismic surveys offshore from Delaware Bay to central Florida.
Environmental groups and many marine scientists fear that the tests’ loud, repeated blasts, which are used to detect oil and gas deposits deep beneath the ocean floor, could upend an underwater ecosystem that relies on sound for communication.
“The ocean is an acoustic world,” said Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s marine mammal protection program. “Whales, fish and many other species depend on sound to survive. The extensive blasting that the Trump administration has authorized would undermine marine life on an enormous scale.”
The NRDC joined several environmental groups in a federal lawsuit filed in South Carolina in December, challenging the administration’s approval of the seismic surveys a month earlier. On Feb. 20, the conservation groups asked the judge in the case to block the seismic tests from going forward while the litigation is pending. The National Marine Fisheries Service decision allows the companies to “incidentally harass” marine mammals during the tests.