Saving Seafood

Environmental groups challenge government’s sale of Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling

March 7, 2023 — Several environmental groups including Healthy Gulf, filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court challenging the Department of Interior’s sale of 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing.

As part of the federal government’s largest oil-and-gas lease offering in history, the Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 259 was slated to take place last year, but was delayed along with other offshore gas and oil auctions, purportedly due to “conflicting court rulings.”

In August, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, included provisions for Gulf of Mexico oil leasing in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in an effort to lower the cost of oil for Americans.

Despite the legislation’s efforts to invest in clean energy solutions and tackle climate change threats, Lease Sale 259 is expected to produce up to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years. The environmental groups argue in their lawsuit that this will contribute “substantially to greenhouse gas pollution that will exacerbate the climate crisis worldwide, undermine national and international efforts to transition to clean energy, and increase harms to Gulf communities.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Interior secretary: ‘Opposition’ to offshore drill plan

April 9, 2018 — PLAINSBORO, N.J. — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday acknowledged there is “a lot of opposition” to President Donald Trump’s plan to open most of the nation’s coastline to oil and gas drilling.

Speaking at a forum on offshore wind energy in Plainsboro, New Jersey, Zinke touted Trump’s “all of the above” energy menu that calls for oil and gas, as well as renewable energy projects.

But he noted strong opposition to the drilling plan, adding there is little to no infrastructure in many of those areas to support drilling.

“There is a lot of opposition, particularly off the East Coast and the West Coast, on oil and gas,” Zinke said.

He said on the East Coast, only the Republican governors of Maine and Georgia have expressed support for the drilling plan, which has roiled environmentalists but cheered energy interests. Maine Gov. Paul LePage has endorsed the plan, but Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has hesitated to take a public position on it.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Post

New Jersey: Bill to ban oil, gas drilling in state waters passes Senate

March 27, 2018 — Bipartisan legislation to ban offshore drilling in state waters and to prohibit infrastructure there from supporting drilling in federal waters off New Jersey, was approved 37-0 on Monday by the state Senate.

“This is a back-door way of blocking the offshore drilling that would be allowed by the federal action,” said co-sponsor Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic. “We control the first 3 miles at the state level, so we will use that authority to try to hinder or block drilling along the Jersey coast, which is vital for the fishing industry.”

President Donald Trump has proposed opening up drilling in federal waters along the Atlantic Coast. State waters run to three miles out, and federal waters from three to 200 miles out.

The Shore Tourism and Ocean Protection (STOP) from Offshore Oil and Gas Act (S-258/A-839) had already passed the Assembly and now goes to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk. Murphy, an opponent of offshore drilling in the Atlantic, is expected to sign it.

Co-sponsor Sen. Chris Brown, R-Atlantic, said protecting the environment is not a Republican or Democrat issue.

“All of our Atlantic County families, retirees and our local economy depend on us protecting our beaches and waterways,” Brown said. “It simply makes sense to preserve our $44 billion tourism economy and our commercial and recreational fisheries for our children and grandchildren.”

It would prohibit offshore drilling in state waters and ban the leasing of tidal or submerged lands in state waters for oil or natural gas production, exploration or development.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

 

MASSACHUSETTS: AG Healey pledges to fight Trump offshore drilling plan along coast

March 14, 2018 — BOSTON — Attorney General Maura Healey on Monday vowed to fight federal plans to open the Massachusetts coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling.

“Massachusetts does not want drilling off our coast and I will fight this proposal to defend our state and our residents,” said Healey in a statement. “Of all the bad environmental ideas the Trump administration has proposed, this one may take the cake.”

President Donald Trump and Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in January announced a plan to offer federal energy leases in most of the nation’s offshore waters, including the North Atlantic planning region stretching from Maine to New Jersey.

The BOEM proposes two such leases within the North Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, starting in 2021 and 2023.

Healey filed formal comments with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Friday. She argued that aside from the risk of oil spills, drilling would conflict with state and federal imperatives to reduce carbon emissions. She said the exploration and extraction is not needed to meet America’s energy needs. Healey said she would consider a legal challenge if necessary.

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Report suggests offshore drilling is a ‘bad deal’ for Florida

March 9, 2018 — Oil drilling along Florida’s coast could put at risk almost 610,000 jobs and $37.4 billion in economic activity, according to a new report by an ocean advocacy group.

Nationally, the nonprofit Oceana’s new economic analysis found that the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan would threaten more than 2.6 million jobs and almost $180 billion in Gross Domestic Product for only two years’-worth of oil and just over one year’s-worth of gas at current consumption rates.

“From ocean views scattered with drilling platforms, to the industrialization of our coastal communities, to the unacceptable risk of more BP Deepwater Horizon-like disasters — expanding offshore drilling to new areas threatens thriving coastal economies and booming industries like tourism, recreation and fishing that rely on oil-free beaches and healthy oceans,” Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. “Coastal communities and states are outraged by this radical plan that threatens to destroy our clean coast economies.”

Oil industry officials disputed the findings, saying their industry has operated safely alongside commercial fishing, tourism and other industries for decades.

Oceana’s report was based on the most recent available data for ocean-dependent jobs and revenue from tourism, fishing and recreation in Atlantic and Pacific coastal states, as well as Florida’s Gulf coast, and compares them to the “undiscovered economically recoverable oil and gas reserves in those states.”

Read the full story at Florida Today

 

Maine critics throw cold water on Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan

The proposal to open 90 percent of the nation’s coastline – including the North Atlantic – to oil and gas exploration draws widespread opposition at an event held by federal officials in Augusta.

March 8, 2018 — AUGUSTA, Maine — Fishermen, environmentalists and lawmakers from Maine’s coast called on the Trump administration Wednesday to exclude the North Atlantic from a plan to potentially reopen much of the nation’s coastline to oil and gas exploration.

Representatives with the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management were in Augusta for an open house-style event to field questions about President Trump’s controversial offshore energy proposal. The draft plan released in January calls for reopening 90 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards to oil and gas drilling, a seismic shift from the 6 percent now available to energy companies. The public comment period on the draft plan closes Friday.

Just two of the 47 proposed lease sales would be in the North Atlantic region stretching from Maine to New Jersey. But the mere prospect of oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine or Georges Bank – and the accompanying environmental risks – was enough to draw more than 60 people to a pre-emptive event held before the bureau’s open house.

Kristan Porter, a fisherman from Cutler who is president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, recalled how one of his predecessors told Congress in 1970 that Maine fishermen were “100 percent against” allowing oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine. Nearly 50 years later, Porter said, nothing has changed.

“Allowing the exploration of oil and gas … could devastate our fisheries, our fishermen and our communities,” Porter said at a news conference. “Maine’s fishing industries are dependent on Maine’s clean water. Even minor spills could irreparably damage the Gulf of Maine.”

Porter was joined at the event by representatives of the Natural Resources Council of Maine and other environmental groups, the aquaculture industry, tourism advocates, and Democratic, Republican and independent politicians. All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation also oppose the plan.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester again at center of drilling fight

March 8, 2018 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — In the late-1970s, an unlikely alliance between environmentalists and commercial fishermen in this storied seaport helped block plans to open up Georges Bank to oil exploration — an effort that ultimately led to a federal moratorium on offshore drilling.

Georges Bank, a shallow and turbulent fish spawning ground southeast of Cape Ann and 100 miles east of Cape Cod, has been fished for more than 350 years. It is once again the center of a battle over drilling, this time stemming from President Donald Trump’s plan to allow private oil and gas companies to work in federal waters.

And, once again, Gloucester is poised to play an oversized role in opposing the efforts.

“It was a stupid idea back then, and it’s a stupid idea now,” said Peter Shelley, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, which teamed up with Gloucester fisherman to fight the proposal more than three decades ago. “But yet here we are, fighting it once again. It’s ridiculous.”

The Trump administration says existing federal policy keeps 94 percent of the outer continental shelf off-limits to drilling. A five-year plan announced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke last year would open at least 90 percent of that area beyond state waters to development by private companies.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

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

 

 

Coastal leaders speak out against offshore oil drilling plans

Many states want to be left out of new oil leases entirely

February 23, 2018 — Politicians and fishing industry representatives from across the country have been speaking out against a proposal from the Department of Interior that would end an Obama-era ban and open up coastal states for offshore drilling operations.

“I find the whole thing to be really quite alarming,” said Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who requested an interview with the Providence Journal to speak out on the proposal. “This might happen if we don’t oppose it loudly enough.”

The New England Fishery Management Council voted to urge federal regulators to take the whole Atlantic coast out of consideration during its first meeting of 2018.

“Spills don’t happen all that often, but there clearly have been a number of cases that we all know about… where those activities have resulted in some significant impacts to our marine resources,” said Doug Grout, chief of New Hampshire’s Marine Division.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

N.J. to Trump: Stay away from our ‘treasured coastal communities’

February 2, 2018 — The [Gov. Phil] Murphy administration has sent another signal to Washington that it does not want drilling off the Jersey Shore.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal joined attorneys general from 11 other states in sending a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday, objecting to the new plan to drill for oil and natural gas throughout federal waters.

In the letter, the attorneys general express “deep concerns” and claim that the plan represents “disregard for vital state interests, economies, and resources.”

Grewal was joined by the attorneys general of North Carolina, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia in the letter to Zinke. Each attorney general outlines concerns specific to their states.

Read the full story at NJ.com