Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: ‘It’s incredibly harmful’: Cape May rally against seismic testing draws crowd

March 19, 2019 — Every year, 65,000 people get aboard Capt. Jeff Stewart’s whale-watching boat.

Now, he says, his business may be in jeopardy as plans for seismic testing along the Atlantic Coast inch closer.

“Seismic testing will affect the whales and dolphins, along with the fish they eat,” said Stewart, of Cape May Whale Watchers. “They’ll have to leave the area and go somewhere else. It’ll be a detriment to the tourism industry.”

The widespread opposition along the Jersey Shore to planned seismic testing brought together more than 100 residents, local officials, high school students and even some inflatable dolphins at a rally outside the Cape May Convention Hall.

The protest comes after the Trump administration last year issued five authorizations to advance permit applications for air gun blasting from Delaware to Florida. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will soon rule on the applications, which would allow oil and gas companies to shoot sound waves into the water every 10 to 15 seconds to locate deposits under the seafloor.

“Our beaches, we can’t afford to lose them. This is our lifeblood down here,” Assemblyman Bruce Land, D-Cumberland, told a crowd with waves crashing in the Atlantic Ocean behind him.

In New Jersey, there’s been pushback from environmentalists and both political parties who say the testing — a precursor to oil drilling — would harm marine mammals and the state’s multi-billion dollar fishing industry.

In Cape May alone, commercial fishing was worth about $85 million in 2017.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Maine gov won’t join group that supports offshore drilling

February 28, 2019 — Maine Gov. Janet Mills has reaffirmed her opposition to oil and gas drilling off the state’s coast by declining to participate in a governors’ group.

Mills, a Democrat, says Maine will not participate in the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition because of concerns about the toll drilling could take on the state’s environment and marine resources. Mills wrote in a letter to the group’s chair that its “work promoting the expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling is incompatible with Maine’s interests.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

South Carolina Isn’t Happy with Trump’s Atlantic Oil Search

February 21, 2019 — More than half the registered voters in Republican-controlled South Carolina supported Donald Trump in a poll last month, but there’s at least one area where state leaders are ditching the president to join rival Democrats: a fight against oil exploration off the Atlantic coast.

While no new drilling has been approved in U.S. Atlantic waters, the Interior Department said in 2014 the region may contain 90 billion barrels of oil and 300 trillion cubic feet of gas. The Trump administration, eager to promote new sources of domestic energy, cleared the way in November for an essential first step to future drilling: geologic surveys using sound waves to pinpoint potential oil deposits. Permits could be issued as soon as next month.

That’s sparked a legal challenge by South Carolina and nine other Atlantic states, some coastal cities and environmental groups, to block a survey method companies have used for decades to scout petroleum reserves all over the world. The plaintiffs say the sound waves are unsafe for marine life, but their goal is broader — to prevent a new energy province off the East Coast that could threaten local tourism and fishing industries.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, a Republican, is taking “any and all actions necessary to ensure that we will never see any seismic testing or drilling” in the state’s coastal waters, Henry McMaster, the Republican governor and one of Trump’s early supporters, said in a statement. McMaster took office in 2017 when Nikki Haley was appointed by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Whale-saving efforts target oil and gas companies

February 21, 2019 — In an effort to protect endangered whales, conservation groups today filed a motion to stop oil and gas companies from conducting seismic airgun exploration from Delaware to Florida.

“In my expert opinion, the introduction of seismic airgun surveys off the U.S. East Coast represents an existential threat to the North Atlantic right whale, an endangered species that is already in a dangerous state of decline,” Scott Kraus, vice-president and senior science adviser for the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium, said in an expert declaration filed with the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is poised to issue permits to five oil and gas exploration companies, and seismic surveys could begin as early as March 30, according to the motion.

The plaintiffs want to halt “seismic airgun blasting” in the Atlantic until the merits of their claims are resolved in court, according to the motion.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Environmental groups seek injunction on air gun blasting until lawsuit decided

February 20, 2019 — Eight environmental firms filed for an injunction against the federal government on Wednesday, 20 February, in an attempt to block five companies from conducting seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean until a lawsuit on the matter can be settled.

The request comes as the federal government could issue permits for the blasting as soon as 1 March, after NOAA announced in December that five permits could be issued for blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. That would enable companies to begin work, as part of a survey for potential oil and gas drilling, by the end of March.

Last December, the groups filed the lawsuit in a South Carolina federal court seeking to stop the blasting in an area ranging from New Jersey to central Florida. A month later, 16 South Carolina coastal cities, a chamber of commerce and the state’s attorney general filed their own lawsuit to block the permits, claiming the blasting could “destroy coastal fishing industries” in the state.

The two cases have since been combined.

In Wednesday’s filing, lawyers for the environmental groups said they could not reach an agreement that would keep the blasting from starting while the lawsuit worked its way through the court system.

“The harm Plaintiffs seek to prevent will begin as soon as seismic blasting does,” the document stated.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Virginia’s Democrats in Congress call to stop seismic testing off coast

February 12, 2019 — In the latest effort to remove Virginia from offshore drilling plans, the state’s Democratic representatives in Congress are pushing federal officials to revoke seismic testing permits that include the waters off Hampton Roads.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the heads of the departments of Commerce and the Interior, the Virginia delegation said the Trump administration’s draft five-year energy plan “runs counter to the explicit wishes of coastal communities up and down the Atlantic that would be at risk from offshore drilling and exploration.”

The appeal was spearheaded by U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin of the 4th district, but the nine signatories include Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Hampton Roads Congress members Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, 3rd district, and Elaine G. Luria, 2nd district.

The letter calls on the administration to rescind five Incidental Harassment Authorization permits issued last November by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and to remove Virginia’s offshore area from the president’s controversial 2019-2024 offshore energy plan.

With IHA permits, energy companies can conduct seismic surveys to see where and how much oil and gas is buried in the seabed.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

New York lawmakers approve ban on offshore drilling

February 8, 2019 — State Senate Democrats approved what was described as historic legislation on Tuesday to ban offshore oil and natural gas drilling along the New York coast, a rebuke of the Trump administration’s plan to open ocean waters to energy companies.

The Democratically controlled Senate easily approved the measure, a day after the legislation passed the Assembly. Officials said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who supports the ban, is expected to sign the bill.

The expected passage of the legislation — sponsored by State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach and chairman of the Senate’s Environmental Conservation Committee — was announced last Sunday at a news conference on the boardwalk, where Kaminsky joined Senate leaders and Assembly Democrats, as well as local officials and environmentalists.

Lawmakers said the legislation would update decades-old laws regulating oil and natural gas drilling and prevent conveyances, leases and acquisitions of land for offshore oil and gas.

“The Senate majority will not stand by as the Trump administration plans to drill off Long Island shores,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said. “Long Island’s natural resources and communities’ quality of life are under threat. The Senate Democratic majority will stand up for Long Island families and fight against any efforts to drill anywhere near New York’s coastlines.”

Read the full story at the Long Island Herald

GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES: Unity in opposition to Georges Bank drilling

January 31, 2019 — The methods vary, but the message should be clear: Keep oil rigs off of Georges Bank.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has been looking to set up drilling operations in the waters off the Massachusetts coast. And for years, a coalition of local interests — primarily fishermen, lawmakers and the environmental lobby —have worked long and hard to keep them out.

If fishermen and environmentalists are standing side-by-side on the issue, you know it’s important. While the latest effort to stave off exploration — in the form of proposed legislation filed on Beacon Hill last week — may not pan out officially, it sends a strong signal that the state is united in opposition to the expansion of drilling into its historic local waters.

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times

Court: No new offshore drilling work during federal shutdown

January 21, 2019 — A federal judge in South Carolina has turned back the Trump administration’s attempt to continue preparatory work for offshore drilling during the federal government’s partial shutdown, issuing a ruling in a federal lawsuit challenging the overall expansion plans.

In his order, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel halted federal agencies “from taking action to promulgate permits, otherwise approve, or take any other official action” for permits to conduct testing that’s needed before drilling work can begin.

The ruling comes a few days after President Donald Trump’s decision this week to recall workers at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management so they could continue to process testing permits for possible drilling off the Atlantic coastline. The recall drew an objection from the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva (gri-HAWL-vah) of Arizona. He called on Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to reverse course or provide a briefing on the legal justification for the move.

Earlier this month, South Carolina joined a federal lawsuit opposing the administration’s plans to conduct offshore drilling tests using seismic air guns. Gergel is overseeing that case, initially filed by environmental groups and municipalities along the state’s coast.

The suit challenges permits for the testing that precedes the drilling itself. It claims the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing the permits.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Offshore Oil Drilling in Florida Still Possible Despite Ban

January 16, 2019 — Floridians took a stand against offshore oil drilling Nov. 6 by voting their opposition into the state constitution, where it’s almost certain to stay for at least a generation.

The issue resonates with Alan Johnson, mayor of St. Pete Beach (population “pushing 10,000”), a 6-mile-long, sandy tourist magnet on Florida’s Gulf coast.

“The big problem that people relate to here is that they’ve been to Houston, where they can see the oil rigs offshore, and they complain about big balls of tar on the beaches. Everybody’s deathly afraid of that happening here,” Johnson says. “We’re the designated sunset capital of Florida and the last thing we want to do is ruin that.”

So did passage of Amendment 9, the new ban on drilling in Florida coastal waters, solve the problem?

Johnson is doubtful. “There was a lot of confusion as to what it really accomplished,” he says. “We’re at the mercy of what happens in Washington.”

State waters extend 3 nautical miles off the coast, but the states have no direct control over 200 miles of federal waters. And oil ignores man-made borders.

Read the full story at U.S. News and World Report