Saving Seafood

Opponents, supporters react to Trump’s offshore drilling plan

February 6, 2018 — Environmentalists, fishermen, and state governments are signaling their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed plan to reopen the ocean off Cape Cod and New England to oil and gas exploration.

“We are skeptical of anything the Trump Administration is doing in the marine environment or anything they are proposing to do,” said Conservation Law Foundation Vice President Priscilla Brooks.

A 2016 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report estimated nearly 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas existed in mostly unexplored areas of the U.S. continental shelf. The new push for fossil fuel exploration and recovery was announced Jan. 4 with the unveiling of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. It is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to make the U.S. more energy independent.

Currently, offshore fossil fuel exploration is controlled by a BOEM plan finalized near the end of the Obama presidency. Obama invoked a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to give what he said would be permanent protection from drilling to the continental shelf from Virginia to Maine.

But there were doubts that Obama’s use of the 1953 law would hold up in court, and the new plan is meant to replace the current one. International Association of Drilling Contractors President Jason McFarland hailed the inclusion of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and an expansion of Gulf of Mexico drilling areas as an important step in achieving the goal of U.S. energy dominance in the world.

“IADC has long argued for access to areas that hold potential for oil and gas development,” McFarland wrote in comments last month, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate of a 48 percent growth in worldwide energy demand over the next 20 years. “The number and scale of the recoverable resources is large, and can lead to thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in investment.”

But the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and the various fishermen’s associations have panned the proposal. Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council approved a comment letter to BOEM that requested Mid-Atlantic and Northern Atlantic lease areas be excluded from the exploration and drilling.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Robert Bryce: Cuomo’s latest green-power fiasco

February 5, 2018 — Since 2015, Gov. Cuomo has been hyping his scheme to remake the state’s electric grid so that by 2030 half of the state’s electricity will come from renewable sources.

But Cuomo’s ambition — to prove his renewable-energy bona fides and thus position himself as a viable Democratic candidate for the White House in two years — is colliding headlong with reality.

Indeed, two events Monday, one in Albany and the other in the upstate town of Somerset, showed just how difficult and expensive his plan has become and how New York ratepayers will be stuck with the bill.

In Albany, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority released its “offshore-wind master plan.” The agency said it was “charting a course to 2,400 megawatts” of offshore capacity to be installed by 2030. That much capacity (roughly twice as much as now exists in all of Denmark) will require installing hundreds of platforms over more than 300 square miles of ocean in some of the most navigated, and heavily fished, waters on the Eastern Seaboard.

It will also be enormously expensive. According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, by 2022 producing a megawatt hour of electricity from offshore wind will cost a whopping $145.90.

Offshore wind promoters claim costs are declining. Maybe so. But according to the New York Independent System Operator, the average cost of wholesale electricity in the state last year was $36.56. Thus, Cuomo’s presidential ambitions will require New York consumers to pay roughly four times as much for offshore electricity as they currently pay for juice from conventional generators.

Why is the governor pushing so hard for offshore wind? The answer’s simple: The rural backlash against Big Wind is growing daily.

Just a few hours after NYSERDA released its plan, the Somerset town board unanimously banned industrial wind turbines. The town (population: 2,700) is actively opposing the proposed 200-megawatt Lighthouse Wind project, which, if built, would be one of the largest onshore-wind facilities in the Northeast.

Wednesday, Dan Engert, the supervisor in Somerset, told me his “citizens are overwhelmingly opposed” to having wind projects built near their homes and that Somerset will protect “the health, safety and rural character of our town.”

Numerous other small communities are fighting the encroachment of Big Wind. In the Thousand Islands region, towns like Cape Vincent and Clayton have been fending off wind projects for years. Last May, the town of Clayton approved an amendment to its zoning ordinance that bans all commercial wind projects.

Read the full story at the New York Post

 

Tom Davis to Congress: ‘Oil and water should not mix’

January 17, 2018 — Below is the text of testimony state Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, plans to deliver Friday, Jan. 19, before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.

The hearing is titled “Deficiencies in the Permitting Process for Offshore Seismic Research.”

Davis provided the text to The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette on Wednesday.

1. Impact of seismic testing:

Seismic testing involves firing loud sonic guns into the ocean floor every 16 seconds to read echoes from the bottom geology, with the tests taking place over miles of ocean for months at a time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirms that the sound from the sonic guns can be recorded from sites more than 1,860 miles away.

Scientists disagree on whether these underwater noises are lethal, but most do agree the blasts could alter sea mammals’ behavior, affecting their migration patterns, mating habits and how they communicate with each other. Most animals in the ocean use sound the way animals on land use eyesight; saturating their environment with noise will have an impact. ExxonMobil had to suspend seismic-blasts near Madagascar after more than 100 whales beached themselves. NOAA estimates that 138,000 marine animals could be injured, and 13.6 million could have their migration, feeding, or other behavioral patterns disrupted.

Seismic testing also affects commercial and recreational fishing — sonic blasts can decrease catch rates of commercial fish species by an average of 50 percent over thousands of square miles. Seismic blasting will affect fish that spawn in the rivers and estuaries all along the East Coast. A 2014 study cited by Congressmen John Rutherford (R-FL) and Don Beyer (D-VA) that found reef fish off North Carolina declined by 78 percent during seismic testing compared with peak hours when tests weren’t being conducted.

2. Results of seismic tests would be proprietary to private companies.

Proponents for testing and drilling often argue that seismic tests are necessary in order to provide coastal communities with data about oil and gas deposits off their shores that is necessary in order to assess whether it makes economic sense to move forward with drilling for those resources. But that information is considered proprietary by the private companies conducting them. Local decision makers won’t have access to it, nor will the public. Not even members of Congress can get their hands on it.

3. Damages associated with drilling.

Accidents happen in a world where human error, mechanical imperfections and coastal hurricanes all play unexpected roles. When you drill, you spill. It is inevitable. The oil industry touts a 99 percent safety record, but that 1 percent is pretty horrific for people living in the vicinity of a spill when it occurs. The federal Mineral Management Service predicts at least one oil spill a year for every 1,000 barrels in the Gulf of Mexico over the next 40 years — a spill of 10,000 barrels or more every three to four years.

We saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when the BP Deepwater Horizon rig spilled millions of barrels of oil into the gulf. It was a disaster, but thankfully the Gulf’s bowl-like shape contained the spill in that region. A similar spill off the Atlantic Coast would be a disaster of epic proportions. If oil entered the Gulf Stream it would be forced up into the Chesapeake Bay, the Hudson River Valley, the Gulf of Maine, the Grand Banks (some of the richest fishing grounds in the world).

The Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon blowout showed that oil cannot be removed from salt marshes and other wetland systems. It can remain in the sediments for decades, as was seen in marshes in Massachusetts. Coastal salt marshes in South Carolina are among the most productive ecosystems in the world, and nursery grounds for many estuarine and marine species. Toxic substances from oil spills, both chronic and acute, will put all of these organisms at risk.

Even if a spill never occurs — and both the oil industry and the federal government admit that spills are inevitable – there’s still an adverse impact to South Carolina’s coast in that the land-based infrastructure necessary to support offshore drilling is dirty and highly industrial. Also, the infrastructure required to transport offshore oil is devastating, e.g., a series of canals built across Louisiana wetlands to transport oil has led to vast destruction of marshlands. Healthy marshlands are a critical component of our ecosystem.

Read the rest of Davis’ future testimony at the Island Packet