http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/anti-arctic-drilling-activists-white-house_n_1518664.html?1337109177
Lucia Graves
lucia@huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 05/15/2012 3:12 pm Updated: 05/15/2012 3:36 pm

WASHINGTON — Because sometimes to get your point across you need to dress up as an Arctic Tern, scores of anti-drilling activists on Tuesday gathered outside the White House dressed in fuzzy onesies and polar bear masks.

The demonstration — organized by Green Peace, Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, Credo Action and Alaska Wilderness League, among other environmental groups — comes as part of a larger effort to pressure President Barack Obama to stop drilling in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, home to such iconic species as the polar bear, bowhead whale and walrus.

“We’re out here today to deliver a million comments to Obama asking him not to allow Shell to drill this summer,” Leah Donahey, western Arctic and oceans program director at Alaska Wilderness League, told The Huffington Post at Tuesday’s rally.

Last fall, the Obama administration affirmed a decision to offer millions of acres of the ocean for sale to oil companies. More than a million people have written letters or signed petitions to ask the president to revoke the permits. Donahey, who was holding the 1.1 million comments to be delivered to the Council on Environmental Equality, said they would be delivered by the end of the day.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes responded to the issue in a statement on Monday. “We welcome the robust political dialogue that we have on this subject and all the input from all of the interested groups,” he said according to reporting from Politico. The groups said they have yet to receive a direct response from the president.

Ben Copp, a 25-year-old intern with the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program who’s spent summers in Alaska working as a fishing guide, told HuffPost that drilling is an issue particularly close to his heart.

Copp, who was dressed as a huge furry Arctic Tern, said of why he’d come out in costume, “The only person who has the power to stop them from drilling in the Arctic this summer is President Obama.” Asked what he thought of the president’s record on the issue he added, “It could be better, and it will be better next term.”

The Sierra Club has also organized thousands of activists to call in to the White House this week to demand that the administration protect America’s Arctic.

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videos and photos at:
http://storify.com/AlaskaWild/hundreds-gather-to-say-no-to-shell-drilling

M15: Million Mobilization to Save the Arctic
Today, in President Obama’s backyard, we delivered comments from more than one million people who said: President Obama, tell Shell Oil, no drilling in our Arctic Ocean! The time is now to turn Shell’s drill ships around!

.
. More than 1 million people tell President Obama: Protect America’s Arctic Ocean now | Alaska Wilderness League

Statement from Cindy Shogan, Executive Director, Alaska Wilderness League: “Speaking for more than 1 million people who have written lett…

. As Shell moves closer to Arctic drilling, environmentalists and others, like insurance giant Lloyd’s of London, speak out about the risks of Arctic drilling.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Obama-challenges-oil-companies-to-drill-existing-3561090.php

Houston Chronicle: Obama challenges oil companies to drill existing leases
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Published 08:37 p.m., Tuesday, May 15, 2012

WASHINGTON – The White House on Tuesday pushed back against the oil and gas industry’s claims that the Obama administration is blocking domestic energy development, releasing a new analysis showing that 46 million acres of federal lands and waters leased for drilling are sitting idle.

According to the Department of Interior report, oil and gas companies are actively drilling or have launched development on less than a third of the 36 million acres they have leased offshore, and on just over half of their onshore leases.

That includes leases where the companies have not yet filed exploration and development plans with the federal government, and ones where companies have received drilling permits but haven’t launched the work. According to the report, the government has issued about 7,000 permits for exploration not yet under way on federal and Indian lands.

The Interior Department analysis, which updates an assessment issued last year, comes as industry leaders accuse the Obama administration of walling off access to domestic energy resources. In particular, industry leaders and their congressional allies complain about the Interior Department’s decision not to sell drilling leases in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans over the next five years.

With gasoline prices and the economy looming large at the ballot box this year, the administration has been emphasizing its commitment to an “all of the above” energy policy and especially touting its support for domestic natural gas production.

Administration officials said the report underscores the White House’s commitment to allowing oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters.

“We continue to make millions of acres … available for safe and responsible domestic energy production on public lands and in federal waters,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a statement. “We also want companies to develop the tens of millions of acres they’ve already leased but have left sitting idle.”

But industry leaders argue that the administration’s numbers don’t reflect the sometimes-long lead times between buying leases and winning federal regulators’ approval to drill on those tracts, or the time needed to assess leases geologically before launching exploration.

‘Election-year politics’

American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard dismissed the report as “election-year politics” and said it was “absurd to contend the industry pays the government billions of dollars every year in bonus bids and rents to leave land idle.”
On the contrary, Gerard insisted, oil and gas companies develop leases as expeditiously as they can.

“The industry last year alone invested $200 billion in the United States,” Gerard said. “So we’re hardly sitting on anything. We’re waiting for Uncle Sam to give us permission to produce these resources.”

Industry representatives also argue that it takes time for companies to conduct technical research and plan for drilling – generally without any guarantee that they will find oil and gas.

Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, said the administration was trying “to deflect blame for leases that are not producing onto the industry.”

Sgamma said the alliance estimates that about half of non-production on onshore acres results from “redundant regulations and bureaucratic delays,” not industry disinterest.

‘Use it or lose it’

Some congressional Democrats have argued that the onus is on the industry to develop their existing holdings. They have proposed “use it or lose it” fees for undeveloped leases that would be paid on top of existing rental rates.

In a bid to spur development, the Interior Department already has boosted annual rental rates for offshore acres that are leased but haven’t started producing oil. The government also has shortened the leasing times for initial drilling in some shallower water depths and hiked the minimum bid for some offshore tracts from $37.50 to $100 per acre.
Separately Tuesday, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management kicked off the formal planning for a November lease sale in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, when it asked energy companies and other stakeholders to say what parts of the region – if any – should be auctioned for drilling.

As many as 630 tracts covering 7.1 million acres in the reserve could be up for grabs.
jennifer.dlouhy@chron.com

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http://transportationnation.org/2012/05/15/report-70-percent-of-offshore-oilfields-unused/

Transportation Nation Report: 70 Percent of Offshore Oilfields Unused
By Andrea Bernstein | 05/15/2012 – 3:01 pm

Some 26 million acres of offshore areas currently under lease for oil and gas development are inactive, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Department of the Interior. A DOI press release touts the finding, and pushes oil companies to, umŠdrill, baby, drill.
The report comes as President Barack Obama pushes his so-called “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, which includes development of alternative fuels but also more vigorous oil drilling.

Here’s an excerpt from the release.

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres currently under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. Out of nearly 36 million acres leased offshore, only about 10 million acres are active – leaving nearly 72 percent of the offshore leased area idle.

In the lower 48 states, an additional 20.8 million acres, or 56 percent of onshore leased acres, remain idle. Furthermore, there are approximately 7,000 approved permits for drilling on federal and Indian lands that have not yet been drilled by companies.

“These lands and waters belong to the American people, and they expect those energy supplies to be developed in a timely and responsible manner and with a fair return to taxpayers,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “We will continue to encourage companies to diligently bring production online quickly and safely on public lands already under lease.”

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http://robbishop.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=295497

Bishop Calls DOI’s Comments on Unused Oil & Gas Leases “Smoke and Mirrors”
Leases remain idle from onerous federal regulations

May 15 –
WASHINGTON- Congressman Rob Bishop (UT-01), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, responded to comments made today by U.S. Department of Interior Ken Salazar that the DOI “want[s] companies to develop the tens of millions of acres they’ve already leased but have left sitting idleŠ”.

“Secretary Salazar’s is basically telling energy companies to run a marathon with a bus strapped to their back. Maybe if the Secretary would reduce rather than add to the redundant bureaucratic red tape and make necessary policy changes that encourage rather than discourage production, companies would be able to development the resources within the leases. Let’s be serious, these comments are smoke and mirrors attempts to appear as though the Administration supports energy production on federal lands. Their thinly veiled attempts to curb specific forms of domestic energy production over the past three years speak for themselves,” said Congressman Bishop.

This graphic from the American Petroleum Institute (API) illustrates the lengthy process required to develop leases.
According to the Institute for Energy Research (IER), in 2011 oil production on federal lands declined from 2010 levels by 11 percent and natural gas production on federal lands declined by 6 percent. However, there was a 14 percent increase for oil production on private and state lands and a 12 percent increase for natural gas production on private and state lands. Natural gas production on federal lands in FY2011 declined by 27 percent from its FY2009 level, when it peaked at 6.82 trillion cubic feet, while natural gas production on state and private lands increased 28 percent during that same period of time.

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http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2012/05/15/big-oil-lets-leases-lie-dormant/

Detroit News

NATIONAL POLITICS MAY 15, 2012, 6:09 PM
Big Oil lets leases lie dormant
BY LIBBY SPENCER

Libby Spencer separating fact from fiction

A while back, when I posted about domestic oil drilling being at a historic high under President Obama, my conservative friends complained that all the drilling was happening on private land. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as it turns out the reason there isn’t more drilling on federal land is big oil companies aren’t drilling on 2/3rds of federally permitted leases. As a new government report on drilling activity shows:

More than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres currently under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans. Out of nearly 36 million acres leased offshore, only about 10 million acres are active – leaving nearly 72 percent of the offshore leased area idle.

In the lower 48 states, an additional 20.8 million acres, or 56 percent of onshore leased acres, remain idle. Furthermore, there are approximately 7,000 approved permits for drilling on federal and Indian lands that have not yet been drilled by companies. […]
In addition to holding thousands of undeveloped leases while lobbying to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, off the New England Coast, and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, the big five oil companies produced 12 percent less oil in 2011 than in 2006 – all while making record profits.

In other words, all this wailing coming from Big Oil and Republicans about President Obama blocking domestic drilling is a big, fat lie. Also, the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s propaganda arm, is lying when it says this report doesn’t include initial exploratory work. As the quoted part of the report clearly shows, they counted any planning stage as an active site.

So to review, Big Oil isn’t drilling where they already have permits, they’re spending money lobbying for opening up even more environmentally sensitive areas to leases, and they’ve decreased production overall, one might assume in order to be able to charge us more for their products. And let’s not forget the millions they sink into campaigns to support climate change denialists to the detriment of our children’s future on this fragile planet.
Remind me again, why on earth we should be giving these companies billions in government subsidies?

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Published: May 9, 2012

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”

Special thanks to Sarah Frias-Torres, Coral-list @ noaa.gov

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/05/04/46224.htm

By CAMERON LANGFORD

HOUSTON (CN) – Exposure to chemical dispersants BP used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill left a commercial diver with seizures, unable to walk and going blind – and two members of his dive team committed suicide, the man claims in Harris County Court. David Hogan and his wife sued BP and NALCO Co. – which made the Corexit oil dispersants – and a host of other defendants, including Halliburton, Transocean, ConocoPhillips, Xplore Oil & Gas and Stuyvesant Dredging Co.

After BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, unleashing the worst oil spill in U.S. history, BP hired contractors to spray and inject more than 1.8 million gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the complaint.

“Between June 1, 2010 and the end of November, 2010, David Hogan performed commercial diving work from boats and vessels that were owned, leased, chartered, contracted for, and/or under the direction and control of Specialty Offshore,
ConocoPhillips, Xplore Oil, and the Stuyvesant defendants in the navigable water of the Gulf of Mexico. On every one of those dives during that period of time, David Hogan dove into waters that were contaminated with both the crude oil and the Corexit® dispersants,” the complaint states.

Hogan says that on his first dive, in June 2010, “he immediately noticed that something was different from his prior diving experiences,” and that “the oil seemed to have sunk considerably deeper into the depths of the Gulf waters than he had ever seen or experienced before. He immediately terminated his dive and returned to the surface, only to find that his wetsuit looked entirely different than it had ever looked before when he had dived into waters with an oil spill.”

Hogan says neither ConocoPhillips nor Specialty Offshore provided him or his team with any information about NALCO’s Corexit dispersants. “Expressing concern for the safety of himself and his dive team, he contacted the ConocoPhillips onsite supervisor, who gave him a ‘BP Hotline’ to call if people had any concerns with respect to health and safety,” according to the complaint.

“Upon calling that number, a person answered, identifying themselves as being with BP. After expressing his concern with respect to what he had seen and experienced during his brief dive, that BP spokesperson told Mr. Hogan there was nothing for him to be concerned about, but that he would have one of BP’s health and safety people come out to the ConocoPhillips platform to talk to Mr. Hogan and his dive team.

“Within the hour, a helicopter landed on the platform and a man who introduced himself as being a BP representative got out of the helicopter came over to talk to Mr. Hogan.

“BP’s ‘health and safety man’ represented and assured Mr. Hogan and his dive that, notwithstanding the fact that they would be diving and spending a considerable amount of time in the Deepwater Horizon’s oil spill, there was absolutely nothing harmful or hazardous to their safety or health in the oil, in the water, or whatever was causing the oil to sink so deep beneath the surface.

“In fact, when this case is tried, the evidence will show that this BP ‘health and safety man’ made Mr. Hogan feel as though it was foolish for Mr. Hogan to have called at all, and it seemed as if the BP ‘health and safety man’ had wasted his time flying all the way out to where Mr. Hogan and his dive team were located, for such a trivial matter.

“Mr. Hogan and the BP ‘health and safety man’ specifically talked about whether Mr. Hogan and his dive team would need to change to ‘haz-mat’ dive gear if there was a concern for safety and health in what was in the water and oil spill; however, the BP ‘health and safety man’ reassured Mr. Hogan that ‘haz-mat’ diving gear was not necessary since there was absolutely nothing in the oil or anything mixed with the oil that was hazardous or of any concern, from a health standpoint to Mr. Hogan and his dive crew.

“Based on that information,” Hogan says, he and his crew worked 18- to 20-hour days for the next 1? to 2 weeks, in water that was “consistently contaminated with oil for a considerable distance below the surface.” Hogan says the water also was contaminated with Corexit.

He and his team worked in the oil- and Corexit-contaminated water for 5 months for a variety of defendants, Hogan says, including ConocoPhillips, Xplore Oil & Gas and Stuyvesant Dredging.

“Again, at the end of each diving day, Mr. Hogan and his dive team’s wetsuits would look like something they had never seen before prior to starting these diving operations back in June 2010,” the complaint states.

Hogan says at least one team member started having health problems before they finished their work for Stuyvesant Dredging.

“Two of the dive team members have since committed suicide,” the complaint states.
Hogan says due to the assurances they got from BP’s “health and safety man,” they did not initially blame their health problems on the contaminated waters.

“However, as Mr. Hogan’s health problems progressed and did not abate, he ultimately contacted a physician in Louisiana who had been treating hundreds of patients who had come into contact with the oil and Corexit® dispersants,” according to the complaint.

“By August, 2011, medical testing and medical evaluation by one or more physicians familiar with exposure to the oil spill and, particularly, exposure to the Corexit® dispersants, led physicians to inform Mr. Hogan that his progressing medical problems were caused by the contact with the oil spill during his diving operations between June and November, 2010.

“Through additional testing and medical evaluation, by November 16, 2011, Mr. Hogan had been diagnosed as suffering from neurotoxicity ‘related to chronic and cumulative exposure to chemical and heavy metals associated with the Gulf oil spill and dispersant.’

“At this time, Mr. Hogan is suffering from a myriad of health issues related to his exposure to the oil spill and NALCO Corexit® dispersants, including but not limited to the fact that he cannot walk, his vision has progressed to being legally blind in his left eye and his most recent eye examination shows that he continues to lose sight in his right eye, and for all intents and purposes, is a paraplegic.”

Hogan says that before his exposure to the chemicals he “was a very gregarious, healthy man” who climbed 14,400-foot Mount Rainier in May 2010.

“Since November 2010, he has lost 60 pounds and is wheelchair-bound. If that were not enough, David has also suffered cognitive problems, seizures, vertigo,” the complaint states. (Graph 63)

Hogan says he is rapidly losing vision in his right eye.

Named as defendants are British Petroleum Exploration & Production Inc.; BP America Inc.; BP America Production Company; BP Products North America Inc.; BP plc; Halliburton Energy Services Inc.; Transocean Ltd.; Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc.; Transocean Deepwater Inc.; Transocean Holdings LLC; NALCO Company; Specialty Offshore Inc.; ConocoPhillps; Xplore Oil & Gas LLC; Stuyvesant Dredging Company; and Stuyvesant Dredging Inc.

Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig; Halliburton performed cement work on the Macondo well beneath the rig before the blowout.

Hogan seeks punitive damages for gross negligence and negligence under general maritime law and the Jones Act, from NALCO for products liability under general maritime law, and punitive damages for past and future physical pain and suffering, past and future mental pain, suffering and anguish, past and future medical bills and lost wages.

He and his wife are represented by Craig Lewis, of Houston.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Friday April 27, 2012

Atlantic City, NJ – On Friday, April 27th, in Atlantic City, the United States Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM), held the last in a series of East Coast hearings on a proposal to blast seismic shockwaves from Florida to the Delaware Bay searching for offshore oil to drill. The hearing was held at 1pm in room 301 of the Atlantic City Convention Center. Citizen groups held a press conference before the hearing to set the record straight. The only purpose for seismic exploration is to support drilling for oil.

These “seismic surveys” involve towing “airgun” arrays behind survey ships, regularly and repeatedly blasting sound waves through the ocean and deep into the ocean floor to pinpoint locations of sub-seabed oil and gas deposits. While the industry term “airgun” suggests an innocuous impact, these surveys generate intense marine noise pollution that propagates over vast areas of the ocean potentially causing significant damage to marine life and marine ecosystems. In addition to the exploratory tactic’s danger to marine life, it is the first step toward oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean – which threatens our clean ocean economy and community.

“The Atlantic Ocean is a vibrant ecosystem that supports extraordinarily diverse marine life, which in turn supports a clean ocean economy for people that fish, dive, surf, swim, or just enjoy,” said Cindy Zipf, Clean Ocean Action’s Executive Director. “We’ve worked hard to clean up our ocean. We will not stand by while our government opens the door to Big Oil. We are here to protect and defend our future,” she added.

Federal studies show if oil was found, it would take decades for oil production to come online, and even then would reduce gas prices by only $0.03 per gallon. However, there is no requirement that oil and gas found in the U.S. must stay here, and it could be exported overseas.

“This wasn’t about the price at the pump – this was about Big Oil making profits at the expense of the fishermen, businesses, and citizens of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Sean Dixon, Clean Ocean Action’s Coastal Policy Attorney. “Only two years after the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf, Big Oil seems to think we’ve forgotten just how dangerous oil drilling can be,” continued Dixon.

“Today citizens got the opportunity to voice their concerns over the dangers of these seismic surveys,” said Dr. Heather Saffert, Staff Scientist at Clean Ocean Action. Dr. Saffert continued: “There are data gaps in the government’s seismic plan big enough to drive oil rigs through. Destructive activities like these surveys will impact our fisheries, our tourism, and our resources – yet the push to find oil seems to be charging full-speed ahead – with or without any idea of what will happen next.”

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About Clean Ocean Action
Clean Ocean Action is a coalition of over 130 boating, business, community, conservation, diving,
environmental, fishing, religious, service, student, surfing, and women’s groups. Based in Sandy Hook,
COA is the only full time regional coalition that works exclusively for a clean ocean off the coasts of New
Jersey and New York.

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