http://www.wlox.com/category/194069/video-center?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6732667#.TzZqiKHT8OU.facebook

Gulf Restoration Network: United for a healthy Gulf of Mexico
Great work by our coalition fighting drilling in Mississippi! The state did admit that most folks don’t want drilling – they wouldn’t share how much they’ve spent on their slick PR campaign to convince coastal communities drilling is a great idea.
WLOX-TV: 85% of People at Public Meetings Oppose Drilling off MS Coast
www.wlox.com

WLOX TV 13 – This week, the Mississippi Development Authority released the results of several public meetings held on their proposal. Thanks to the work of the 12 Miles South Coalition, it was revealed that the vast majority of those who commented on the fast-tracked proposal are opposed.

http://www.truth-out.org/what-koch-brothers-say-online-wont-say-under-oath/1328906640
Friday 10 February 2012
by: Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundation | Op-Ed

David Koch. (Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)

Why will Charles and David Koch produce a video about their position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline and not testify before Congress about it? The Koch brothers have refused to answer questions about how they stand to profit from the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile long boondoggle that would cut through six states and damage American homes and farmland.

The Koch brothers have an attack-dog website of their own, KochFacts.com, which they have used defensively and reflexively to attack me and others who’ve questioned or investigated the Koch brothers’ vast $100 billion business. The Koch brothers refuse to testify in Congress about their interest in the pipeline, but they’ll make a web video asserting their innocence.

We took the Kochs’ video retreat and added a few facts from the historical record.

Maybe the Koch brothers prefer to let their allies in Congress speak for them? House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Rep. Ed Whitfield got $15,000 in donations from Koch Industries. Is he doing the Koch brothers bidding?

Whitfield is the tip of the iceberg. The Koch brothers and their employees were the single largest oil and gas donors to the committee with jurisdiction over the Keystone XL pipeline. They’ve contributed $279,500 to 22 of the 31 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Los Angeles Times. It makes sense then that Whitfield and his cohorts would shy away from biting the hand that feeds them.

But the Koch brothers admit their business interests in Keystone. A Koch company website confesses to being among the “largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters” at the pipeline’s starting point in Northwest Canada.

What’s stopping the Koch brothers from testifying under oath in Congress? Apparently the Koch brothers are OK publishing statements on KochFacts.com that they won’t repeat in Congress. Why won’t they testify before Congress and put the issue to rest?

Activism around the Keystone pipeline has put the Koch brothers on the defensive. We need to continue insisting the Koch brothers testify in Congress. If they’ll make a video about the Keystone XL pipeline, why can’t they testify about their interest in it?

http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/02/national_park_service_mississi.html

Published: Friday, February 10, 2012, 7:30 PM
By The Associated Press

The National Park Service says it opposes offshore drilling rules proposed by the Mississippi Development Authority. The federal agency said allowing drilling within one mile of Horn and Petit Bois islands would spoil the islands’ congressionally designated wilderness character.

Meanwhile, casino operators say they’re not opposed to drilling but don’t want tourist areas overrun by industrial equipment, boats and workers. The drilling is mainly expected to produce natural gas.

The letters were among those MDA received during a 43-day comment period and in public hearings on its draft of offshore leasing and seismic surveying rules. Environmental groups were critical of MDA for not extending the comment period.

Daniel Brown, superintendent of Gulf Islands National Seashore, wrote a Jan. 31 letter to MDA saying the state should not allow industrial structures that would spoil the scenic and wild character of the islands. He wrote that the park service “opposes final development and subsequent issuance of the proposed rules for offshore seismic surveying and minerals leasing within Mississippi state waters, as those proposed rules are written.”

A group that opposes drilling in state waters sent Brown’s letter Friday to The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Brown said the park service needed more time to evaluate how the rules would affect the seashore, which includes all or part of five barrier islands in the Mississippi Sound. He noted 10 problems, among them the possibility for degraded scenery at the seashore, as well as light, water and air pollution that could harm birds, turtles and dolphins

“Due to their untrammeled and pristine character, the barrier islands attract approximately 1.1 million visitors per year,” Brown wrote, saying the park service has a duty to preserve the islands forever. “One of the primary attractions is the opportunity to enjoy unencumbered scenic view sheds of the Gulf of Mexico, the night sky and other recreational attributes that are inherent to a natural setting that is unaffected by artificial sights and noise.”

The Sun Herald reports the casino letter was sent to the MDA by lawyers for Beau Rivage, Island View and IP casinos. The Beau Rivage and IP are in Biloxi and the Island View is in Gulfport.

In the letter, the casino operators want to know where ports to support exploration and drilling would be located and what routes would be used to move equipment to and from drilling and exploration sites.

The casino operators recommended MDA include in its leasing- and seismic-testing rules language from a 2004 offshore oil and gas law that prohibits activity in most of the near-shore waters of the Mississippi Sound.

Many environmentalists and some coastal business leaders still oppose any offshore exploration or drilling and have said even after most of the Sound was put off limits, the barrier islands and other areas could still be harmed.

Casino and some other business leaders reigned in their protest when the 2004 law was written to secure protection for most near-shore water. Only two areas, on the Alabama and Louisiana lines, would allow exploration and drilling nearshore.

Opponents have said the Legislature could easily come back later and open water inside the Sound to drilling, and the Alabama-line area is near fragile habitat.

MDA officials told the newspaper that they will consider the casinos’ concerns and meet with tourism leaders. They said they were uncertain where landside operations will be based or exactly who might regulate their operations, but they don’t believe drilling will harm tourism or the environment.

“From MDA’s standpoint, tourism is vital,” said MDA spokesman Dan Turner. “Between (oil and gas) and tourism, tourism is a bigger deal — at least it is now. It’s here. It’s happening now and we want it to continue to grow.”

Jack Moody, MDA’s program director for mineral leasing, said, “We don’t want to turn a tourist area into an industrial one.”

He said the Mississippi Coast already has three industrial ports, and likely any oil and gas operations would be based in those.

But, he said, “we want to maintain flexibility” with rules, because some area boaters and fishermen might want to work with oil and gas.

“We want to allow Mississippians to get those jobs,” Moody said.

Cathy Beeding, attorney for Island View, said casinos just want to see “a balanced approach” to exploration and drilling that protects tourism.

“We certainly understand the state’s interest in economic development, and we don’t want to stymie that,” Beeding said. “As they move to the next steps, we want to make sure they balance those concerns.”

The Mississippi Sierra Club and the Gulf Restoration Network sent out a news release Friday that said the process was not transparent and had resulted in mistakes.

Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club, said in the news release that the process was an “outrage and insulting” to the public and officials “who have voiced concerns about a rush to judgment on these rules before the public has had an opportunity to properly review them.”

MDA has estimated there is around 350 billion cubic feet of natural gas offshore and that the state could receive $250 million to $500 million over however many years it takes to pump it out.

Local governments would also receive severance payments.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/296258/20120210/gulf-mexico-florida-coast-guard-cuba-oil.htm

By PIERRE BERTRAND: Subscribe to Pierre’s RSS feed
February 10, 2012 12:54 AM GMT

Cuba’s fledgling oil industry has for the first time dropped an offshore rig into the waters off the Florida Keys, a move that has U.S. officials and environmentalists warning that the island nation’s energy ambitions could come at the expense of the ecologically sensitive region at the tip of the Florida Peninsula.

“Cuba cannot be trusted to provide even the bare essentials to its own citizens and it certainly can’t be trusted to oversee safe and environmentally sound oil drilling only 90 miles off our pristine Florida coast,” said Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation.

Working with Spain’s biggest oil company, Repsol, Cuba has placed an exploratory well 30 miles off Havana, 5,600 feet below the ocean surface. It’s one of five wells planned in the region and is deeper than BP’s Macondo well that spilled millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The well sits 56 miles away from the Keys. By contrast, BP’s well was 41 miles off the Lousiana coast. Cuban officials hope that the oil produced offshore will fill a 100,000-barrel-a-day supply gap currently covered by Venezuela.

Because of the well’s location in the Florida Strait a spill or blowout, like the one that occurred in the Gulf, would be an environmental disaster of untold peril, said John Proni of Florida International University, a scientist with the Atlantic Oceanography and Meteorological Laboratory, a branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Proni, who also testified before the maritime subcommittee, explained that the Cuban rig sits dangerously close to the Gulf Stream current system. Any leaked oil that gets into this whirlpool would reach U.S. coastal waters quickly and threaten the “iconic Florida coral reef system, important fisheries and breeding grounds, location of threatened and endangered sea grass and coral, and habitat for rare and endangered species,” Proni said.
The drilling of the well is expected to take roughly two months.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement concluded last month that the Cuban rig met U.S. standards after American offshore oil drilling regulators boarded and reviewed the Spanish-operated equipment before it reached Cuban waters. However, because the rig was not bound for U.S. territory, nor contracted for exploration in the United States, the regulators had no authority to influence Repsol’s plans. The U.S. has recently overhauled its offshore permitting processes and tightened regulations — and it is likely that these rules will continue to evolve in the coming years. Since the U.S. and Cuba do not have diplomatic relations, it will be impossible to continue to monitor this offshore project even as the standards for operating rigs in coastal waters improve.

Oil spills in offshore projects are an increasingly common occurrence. From the early 1970s through the 1990s there were only four a year in U.S. waters. But between 2005 and 2010, there was an average of more than 20 oil spills a year in coastal waters. So although Repsol has a relatively good reputation for quality, the chance of a spill cannot be discounted. If it occurs in this project, Cuba simply does not have the capabilities or equipment to respond quickly enough to an accident before it begins to compromise the waters around it, said Jorge Pinon, a former president of Amoco Oil Latin America and an expert on Cuba’s oil industry. The BP well blowout required 5,000 vessels, three additional rigs, submersibles, more than 100 aircraft and 30,000 emergency responders to get under control.

“Cuba doesn’t have these assets,” said Pinon. “They will have to come from the United States.”

Because of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which restricts business transactions and trade between the two countries, U.S. companies and experts would not be permitted to respond to a Cuban offshore oil rig accident. However, Pinon noted that the U.S. president could temporarily lift the embargo to allow crews and first responders to participate in a shutdown and recovery operation. The Spanish rig uses a U.S. blowout preventer so replacement equipment could theoretically be sent in as well.

But the logistics of such a rescue effort would mar its effectiveness, Pinon added. With so little routine communication and so much antagonism between the two countries, it’s hard to imagine how a plan could be worked out quickly for who takes command of the many moving parts involved in a cleanup. And there would be many questions to address about whether U.S. spotter and oil dispersant planes could fly in Cuban airspace, where rescue teams could operate and whether crews would need visas. All of this could greatly delay the response and increase the chance that the Florida Keys would be damaged, Pinon said.

Jennifer Diaz, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said the state is in the process of drafting a coastal oil spill response plan. Two others for the region are being put together by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Lt. Patrick Montgomery, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, which would take the lead on any ocean cleanup, said it is always on the lookout for oil spills. But in the event of a spill in Cuban territorial waters, the Coast Guard’s response powers are nil.

Montgomery said that under current rules crews can only clean up oil that is spilled or drifts into U.S. and international waters. But since the well is in Cuban territory, it will be the responsibility of Cuban and Repsol authorities to shut down a malfunctioning well and prevent any oil from leaking.

“We have in place contingency plans that adhere to the strictest international standards and are confident that we have all the elements in place to deal with potential threats,” said Kristian Rix, a spokesman for Repsol, who did not elaborate further. “Our diligence has been rewarded by the positive comments and feedback received from the U.S. Coast Guard during their inspection of the rig.”

Rix added the company implemented two suggestions made by U.S. regulators but did not elaborate.

Manuel Marrero of the Cuban Ministry of Basic Industry said on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Website that Cuba’s environmental regulations pertaining to oil drilling are “very strict and severe.” Companies involved in the drilling of offshore oil in Cuban waters will be required to have equipment and a logistics center in the coastal town of Mariel, located several miles outside Havana.

None of this is comforting to Frank Verrastro, senior VP and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Energy and National Security Program, who put it succinctly: Cuba has never drilled for deepwater oil before and “the expectation is [Cubans] don’t have the capability to handle [a large spill].”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

This Fact Sheet explains in plain words the dangerous OCS offshore drilling provisions contained in HR 7, which can be used in drafting letters and added into the context of comprehensive fact sheets also covering the Arctic Refuge drilling and other issues. Feel free to use and adapt this as needed. Richard Charter

Florida’s Gulf Coast:
Waives the bipartisan agreement reached in 2006 called the “Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act” (GOMESA) which opened vast new areas to exploration and, in exchange, guaranteed necessary protections for the Military Mission Line in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. HR 7 ignores this compromise and would instead require new lease sales of not less than fifty contiguous tracts within GOMESA during 2013, again in 2014, and again during 2015. Should the Secretary of Defense identify any military areas in conflict with the proposed leasing plan, for each and every single tract removed from leasing for Department of Defense purposes, two other tracts would be substituted for leasing, regardless of other values.

California:
Requires offshore drilling on tracts in sensitive Southern California waters to be conducted from shore or from existing offshore platforms using the very risky application of directional drilling, a technique particularly vulnerable to the same kinds of “cementing” problems that contributed to the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. States’ rights under the Coastal Zone Management Act would be waived for all related drilling activities off of Southern California.

Off of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and along the Atlantic coast, requires that at least fifty-percent of the coastal tracts in any OCS Planning Area considered most likely to have petroleum potential be offered for lease in each and every subsequent “Five-Year OCS Leasing Program”, with no consideration of fisheries values or local economic concerns. Another fifty-percent of any remaining such tracts required to be offered in the next Five-Year Program, continuing until entire planning area is leased.

Virginia:
Requires that lease sale 220 along the mid-Atlantic be held no later than one year after enactment of this Act, and that the present seaward boundaries now associated with the Commonwealth of Virginia be arbitrarily expanded northward and southward to encompass federal waters now associated with North Carolina and Maryland. Should the Secretary of Defense identify any military areas in conflict with the proposed leasing plan, for each and every single tract removed from leasing for Department of Defense purposes, two other tracts would be substituted for leasing, regardless of other values.

Bristol Bay, Alaska:
Requires that the Secretary of Interior conduct Lease Sale 214 in Bristol Bay, Alaska within one year of enactment, amidst the largest runs of wild salmon on earth, in waters supplying 40% of the total U.S. fish catch including halibut, red king crab, Pacific cod, and pollock and supporting billions in sustainable annual economic activity.