Saving Seafood

Official: Plan to Exclude Florida From Drilling Isn’t Final

An Interior Department official says the Trump administration’s promise to exempt Florida from an offshore drilling plan is not a formal action.

January 22, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s promise to exempt Florida from an offshore drilling plan is not a formal action, an Interior Department official said Friday in a statement that Democrats said contradicted a high-profile announcement by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke has proposed opening nearly all U.S. coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling, but said soon after announcing the plan that he will keep Florida “off the table” when it comes to offshore drilling.

Zinke’s Jan. 9 statement about Florida “stands on its own,” said Walter Cruickshank, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, but there’s been no formal decision on the five-year drilling plan.

“We have no formal decision yet on what’s in, or out, of the five-year program,” Cruickshank told the House Natural Resources Committee at a hearing Friday.

Zinke’s announcement about keeping Florida off the table, made during a Tallahassee news conference with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, will be part of the department’s analysis as it completes the five-year plan, Cruickshank said.

Democrats seized on the comment to accuse Zinke of playing politics by granting the Republican governor’s request to exempt Florida while ignoring nearly a dozen other states that made similar requests.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News & World Report

 

N.J. leaders seek to block Trump plan for oil drilling off Jersey shore

January 10, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Three dozen Senate Democrats, including Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to exclude the Atlantic coast from plans to expand offshore oil drilling.

New Jersey lawmakers also questioned why drilling would still be allowed off the Garden State coast while Zinke has dropped plans to allow it off the Florida coast.

Acting at the behest of President Donald Trump, Zinke proposed opening most of the area off the U.S. coasts to oil drilling, including the Atlantic coast that currently is off limits through at least 2022.

“This draft proposal is an ill-advised effort to circumvent public and scientific input, and we object to sacrificing public trust, community safety, and economic security for the interests of the oil industry,” the 36 senators wrote to Zinke. “We urge you to abandon this effort.”

Reps. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist. and Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., signed a separate letter to Zinke in opposition to Atlantic offshore drilling.

Read the full story at NJ.com

John Sackton: Trump Order on Offshore Drilling is a Political Stunt More Than a Real Theat to Fisheries

January 5, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — We have been deluged with press releases and new stories this morning reacting to the executive order by President Trump opening up virtually all US coastal waters to oil drilling.

This is something that has been opposed for more than 50 years by both the fisheries and tourism industries, and is opposed by all coastal states except for Alaska, and those in the Gulf of Mexcio where drilling is already taking place.

We doubt this decision will stand.

First of all, the oil markets are not signaling any strong interest in offshore drilling, although they do want the political payoff from the administration of opening up public lands in protected areas within the continental US.

Oil analysts say that current and projected prices simply don’t support expansion of offshore drilling into new expensive areas.  The Shell project to do a test site in the Beaufort Sea off the North Slope of Alaska ended in humiliating failure, as they could not even get the rig into place.  After spending $7 billiion, Shell has withdrawn its interest.

Secondly, drilling has is a long term time horizon.  It will take about 18 months for rules to be in place; then if there were leases, it would take ten years or so for exploration and development.  During this time, the political equation in Washington is very likely to shift back to the consensus that has existed for 40 or 50 years, which is that fisheries and tourism are more important to the US economy than the oil companies.

Third, the US is now on track to produce a record amount of oil, surpassing the previous highest output in 1970.  This is all due to improved technology for land based recovery.  Why oil companies would turn from their successful fracking model that is bringing old wells to life to a far more risky offshore strategy makes no economic sense.

Finally, with the exception of Alaska, Texas, and Louisiana, virtually all other coastal states are vehemently opposed to offshore drilling.  Florida lost billions of dollars in the Deep Water Horizon disaster, and no Florida politician can survive who does not protect that state from offshore drilling.

Likewise, California experienced the Santa Barbara channel spill that turned the entire state against offshore drilling there, and it is highly unlikely that the state would allow the regulatory process to proceed to bring oil ashore.

In Massachusetts, there is a long running international moratorium in drilling on Georges Bank, and again, the local opposition to any oil company attempting to use a lease would be ferocious.

Given the lack of economic return, no oil company is going to take up this fight for any reason other than to gain political points with Trump.  That is not a good position on which to base a long term strategy.

The one state where this might make a difference in Alaska, where the state budget is dependent on oil, and has been hit more than anywhere else by the global oil glut and the turn to natural gas and solar.  Alaska is desperate to gain more drilling, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski succeeded in getting a provision opening ANWR  to oil drilling.  But no matter how much the current state government may want more drilling, the economics dictate where such drilling might take place, and it certainly does not appear to be offshore.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Proposed law could mean more drilling off California coast

November 27, 2017 — ORANGE COUNTY, California — Many of the 27 oil platforms drilling into the underwater shelf off the coast from Santa Barbara to Huntington Beach are decades old and, in the eyes of the oil industry and others, ready to be shut down.

Some cost big money to operate at a time of sagging oil prices. Others need expensive technical upgrades. And all are political targets, widely viewed in a liberal state as bigger environmental risks than the potential reward of pulling yet more carbon-generating oil from the Earth.

But the rigs also represent potential profit. By some estimates at least one billion barrels of oil remain untapped in the shelf off of Southern California, much of it accessible from federal waters, not the state-controlled areas within three miles of the coastline.

And that risk vs. profit conflict — plus Trump-era politics — is why lawmakers representing California are clashing with federal regulators over proposed legislation known as the Strengthening the Economy with Critical Untapped Resources to Expand American Energy Act.

Proponents say the SECURE American Energy Act will create high-wage jobs by making it easier for oil companies to work on federal land and in federal waters, all with less federal oversight.

Read the full story at The Orange County Register

SOUTH CAROLINA: Concerned citizens and politicians to attend oil drilling hearing in Columbia

November 22, 2017 — Members of the grassroots group Stop Oil Drilling in the Atlantic, known as SODA, are urging people to accompany them and state legislators for an ad-hoc committee meeting on offshore oil drilling at the State House in Columbia on Tuesday, Nov. 28.

The S.C. House of Representatives’ Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs full-day ad-hoc committee meeting will start at 10 a.m. in Room 110 of the Blatt Building on the State House grounds. The meeting will be live streamed on www.scstatehouse.gov.

“SODA expects residents from the coastal counties to attend and speak,” said JeanMarie Neal, a SODA member. “Not everyone will be able to speak, but those who do will each have just a few minutes to address the committee.”

According to Oceana, opposition to seismic testing and/or offshore drilling includes 126 East Coast municipalities; over 1,200 local, state and federal elected officials; an alliance representing over 41,000 businesses and 500,200 fishing families from Florida to Maine; New England, South and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils; other commercial and recreational fishing interests, such as the Fisheries Survival Fund, Southern Shrimp Alliance, Billfish Foundation and International Game Fish Association; numerous chambers of commerce, tourism boards, and homeowners, restaurant and hotel associations from New Jersey to Florida; NASA, the Department of Defense and the Florida Defense Support Task Force.

Read the full story at South Strand News

Arctic Refuge Drilling Closer as Senate Moves to Open Site

October 23, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one step closer to oil and gas drilling.

A budget measure approved by the Republican-controlled Senate late Thursday allows Congress to pursue legislation allowing oil and gas exploration in the remote refuge on a majority vote.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska said Congress can create jobs and enhance energy security by opening a small section of the 19.6 million-acre site to drilling.

“More energy production means more American jobs, more American economic growth, more American national security … and a more sustainable global environment, because no one in the world produces energy more responsibly than Americans, especially Alaskans,” Sullivan said.

But Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state said drilling was not worth the risks to a fragile ecosytem that serves as important habitat for polar bears, caribou and migratory birds.

 Read the full story by the Associated Press on US News

Trump administration nears decision that sets stage for offshore drilling in the Atlantic

September 11, 2017 — Environmental groups are bracing for the Trump administration to approve controversial testing along the Eastern seaboard that would mark a significant step toward offshore drilling in waters off the coast of Florida all the way north to the Delaware Bay.

Five geophysical survey companies are seeking federal permission to shoot pressurized air blasts into the ocean every 10 to 12 seconds around the clock for weeks and months at a time, seeking fossil fuel deposits beneath the Atlantic Ocean floor.

The testing, which would cover 330,000 square miles of ocean, faces fierce opposition from environmental groups and local officials due to the possible economic and environmental effects.

Because the underwater blasts are louder than a Saturn V rocket launch and can be heard by monitoring devices more than 2,500 miles away, scientists fear long-term exposure to the noise could cause hearing loss and impair breeding, feeding, foraging and communication activity among dolphins, endangered whales, other marine mammals and sea turtles.

Some worry the blasts could cause mother whales and their calves to become separated. Commercial and recreational fisheries could also be affected if fish change their breeding and spawning habits to avoid the noise. Others fear disoriented marine life could collide with the vessels that tug the air guns or become entangled in their lines. Oceana, an international conservation group, estimates that 138,000 marine mammals could be injured in the testing process.

Seventy-five marine scientists asked the Obama administration in 2015 to reject seismic air gun testing in the Atlantic because of these threats. Twenty-eight marine biologists did the same in 2016 over concerns that testing would harm the estimated 500 endangered North Atlantic right whales.

“That’s the species we are most concerned about,” said Doug Nowacek, associate professor of conservation technology at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina. “They are in decline. They live coastally along the U.S. They were hunted (by whalers) and they were slowly recovering. And now they’re starting to decline again.”

Read the full story from the McClatchy Company at the Miami Herald

North Carolina submits formal comments in opposition to offshore drilling

August 21, 2017 — Gov. Roy Cooper and the Department of Environmental Quality submitted formal comments yesterday to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to convey North Carolina’s opposition to oil and gas leasing for offshore drilling on North Carolina’s coast.

“Because offshore drilling threatens North Carolina’s critical coastal industries and unique coastal environment with limited benefits for our citizens, it is a bad deal for North Carolina,” Cooper wrote in the letter. “Accordingly, I ask that you respect the wishes of our state and maintain in the new OCS Leasing Plan the current prohibition of oil and gas drilling off North Carolina’s coast.”

Coastal tourism generates $3 billion annually in North Carolina and supports more than 30,000 jobs in the eastern part of the state. Commercial fishing also brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the state every year.

Read the full story at Island Free Press

Congressmen hear pitches on how to open up Alaska’s natural resources

August 18, 2017 — Alaska Rep. Don Young has spent the week guiding some of his fellow Republican members of Congress around some of Alaska’s natural resources, and the group said they’re ready to act to make drilling and mining more accessible in Alaska.

Young and four other members of the congressional Western Caucus joined with representatives of oil, gas, timber, fish, Alaska Native corporations and other industries in Anchorage on Thursday to discuss just what Congress could do to encourage more production in Alaska.

The industry representatives and Republican lawmakers agreed on the overall plan: Get the federal government out of the way. For the lawmakers, that meant naming names of troublesome bureaucrats.

The industry groups spoke of reforming regulatory programs and paring back the power of agencies and environmental groups.

Young convened the group at the Dena’ina Center downtown after travels to the North Slope to check out facilities run by ConocoPhillips and BP, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Pump Station No. 1, start of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

The group also visited the Fort Knox Gold Mine outside of Fairbanks. Afterward, some of them headed south for a fishing trip this weekend.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Cape May County Chamber Applauds Governor’s Opposition to Offshore Oil Drilling Plan

August 17, 2017 — CAPE MAY, N.J. — The Cape May County Chamber of Commerce applauds the Christie Administration for its statement opposing offshore exploration and development of oil and natural gas resources off the coast of New Jersey or any area of the Atlantic that could adversely affect our pristine coastal communities, fishing estuaries and vibrant tourism economy.

The Cape May County Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Clean Ocean Action and the Jersey Shore Partnership, along with other concerned organizations, encouraged Governor Christie to issue this statement before the Aug. 17 deadline to submit comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

Read the full story at the Cape May County Herald