http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23555

Sustainable Business

03/29/2012 03:42 PM

Interior to Begin Seismic Exploration for Oil Drilling Off East Coast
SustainableBusiness.com News
The Department of Interior announced yesterday that it’s moving forward to open offshore oil and gas exploration off our Mid- and South Atlantic coastline.

To determine where it’s best to drill, oil companies first use dangerous high-pressure air guns and other seismic exploration methods up and down the Atlantic coast.

Imagine blasting dynamite in a neighborhood every 10-12 seconds for weeks or months on end. Now imagine that you can’t see, and depend on your hearing to feed, communicate and just about everything else you need for survival. That’s the situation whales, fish, and other marine wildlife are facing.

“Today’s announcement is great for petroleum companies, but horrible news for our coastlines and a potentially deadly blow to ocean fisheries and wildlife. It’s yet another reason why we need to break our dangerous addiction to oil-not find more ways to feed that addiction,” says Frances Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Michael Jasny, Senior Policy Analyst for NRDC says:
Airgun noise is loud enough to mask whale calls over literally thousands of miles, destroying their capacity to communicate and breed. It can drive whales to abandon their habitat and cease foraging, again over vast areas of ocean; closer in, it can cause hearing loss and death. The latest science from NOAA and Cornell shows that endangered North Atlantic right whales – which calve off the coast of Georgia and Florida – are especially vulnerable.

And the concern isn’t just about whales. For years, fishermen in other parts of the world have complained about loss of catch when seismic comes around – and for good reason. Norwegian researchers have shown that airguns dramatically depress catch rates in commercial fish by as much as 40-80%, depending on the fishing method. Again the impact area can be huge: roughly the size of Rhode Island for a single seismic survey.

Green technologies that would substantially cut the environmental footprint of airguns in many areas can be available for commercial use in 3-5 years or less. Yet the administration is opening the floodgates now, in areas it doesn’t even intend to consider for leasing until 2017. Industry has already applied to run hundreds of thousands of miles of trackline from Delaware south through Florida, blasting all the way.

We can’t boom-and-drill our way to lower gas prices. But we can destroy our oceans trying.
In coming months, the Department of Interior will hold public hearings on this issue.

Last November, President Obama announced his 5-year plan for offshore drilling. It’s hard to understand why this seismic exploration is necessary given that his plan says the Pacific and Atlantic coasts would be off-limits to drilling.
The plan satisfies neither the GOP – which wants much more widespread drilling – or the environmental community – which points to the Gulf spill as evidence that there is no safe offshore drilling in deep waters.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/drilling-off-the-atlantic-coast-moves-a-step-closer/2012/03/28/gIQApNvrhS_story.html

Washington Post

Drilling off the Atlantic Coast moves a step closer

March 28, 2012

By Darryl Fears,
The Obama administration on Wednesday took a significant step toward allowing oil and natural gas companies to drill off the coasts of Virginia and other Eastern Seaboard states.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a plan to allow companies to conduct seismic mapping surveys on the outer continental shelf of the Atlantic Coast from Delaware to the middle of Florida.

“As part of our offshore energy strategy, we want to open the opportunity to conduct seismic exploration so we can know what resources exist in those areas,” Salazar said in Norfolk. “The fact is our information is 30 years old, and it’s out of date. The bottom line is it’s an important safe step to understand what resources are out there.”

In addition to assessing how much oil and natural gas is in the area, seismic testing would help determine the best places for wind turbines and other renewable energy projects, locate sand and gravel for restoring eroding coastal areas, and identify cultural artifacts such as historic sunken ships.

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, in a statement, praised the announcement as “a small step forward in the development of our offshore energy resources.” But he also chided the administration for not allowing oil exploration off Virginia last year, a “breakthrough that would have led to the creation of thousands of new jobs in our state, generated significant revenues for state and local governments, and led to more domestic energy production.”

Environmental groups attacked the survey proposal, saying the sonic booms could injure hundreds of thousands of dolphins and whales and disrupt the feeding, mating and reproductive patterns of marine mammals millions of times each year.

“They’re acoustic animals. They’ve evolved over millions of years,” said Michael Jasny, a senior analyst for the Natural Resources Defence Council. “To take away their ability to hear, to damage their ears could be like a death sentence.”

“Why explore when we don’t want drilling in the first place?” asked Eileen Levandoski, a Virginia Beach resident who works for the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter. “While the [Gulf of Mexico] and its people are today still reeling from the BP gulf oil spill disaster, there are huge incidents right now occurring off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea and off the Brazilian coast. The risk continues to be real and formidable.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has received about 10 requests for permits from companies that conduct seismic surveys and sell the data to oil companies. Seismic surveys map hundreds of miles of ocean with acoustic waves that reveal contours of the ocean floor.

Surveys could begin early next year. Before that happens, BOEM will hold public hearings in Annapolis, Norfolk, Savannah and five other cities along the coast. Public comment is scheduled to end May 30, and the process of incorporating the testimony and finalizing the plan will take the rest of the year.

McDonnell’s government said 80 percent of Virginians support offshore oil and gas exploration. The governor said not allowing exploration last year pushed back any possibility of lease sales to 2018, at the earliest, and he said $4-a-gallon gasoline prices are evidence that exploration is needed.

Salazar, echoing Obama and economic experts, said that “there is no silver bullet for high gas prices” and that current domestic gas production is higher than any time in the past eight years.

“I’m proud of the progress that we’ve made over the last three years. Domestic gas and oil production is up, foreign imports of oil are down,” Salazar said. “In fact, imports of oil decreased by a million barrels a day in the last year alone.”

Tommy Beaudreau, director of BOEM, said planning surveys takes time. “Seismic surveys are important … but you need to be careful to manage the potential environmental effects, including effects on marine mammals.”

Jasny said those effects will be significant. He said that the technique has been used in many waters and that “seismic air guns have an enormous environmental footprint.
“Humpback whales and fin whales, both endangered, have been shown to fall silent and abandon habitat over areas of hundreds of thousands of square miles. Fish have been displaced over vast areas.

“Fishermen have complained for years about losses in catch,” he said.
Staff writer Anita Kumar contributed to this report.

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http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/schasis/drilling_our_atlantic_coast.html

Sarah Chasis’s Blog
Drilling our Atlantic Coast

Posted March 28, 2012 in Reviving the World’s Oceans

Some of the most mysterious and enthralling places on Earth may be next in line for oil and gas drilling.

Today the Obama Administration released its draft Environmental Impact Statement on its proposed plan to allow areas offshore the Mid- and South Atlantic to be surveyed for their energy development potential. This would allow seismic surveying, which uses air guns (i.e. high decibel acoustic energy pulses blasted from ships) to map the ocean floor.

Seismic surveys can be catastrophic to ocean life, including endangered whales and commercial fishing stocks.

In the ocean, animals communicate by sound. The sound impact from seismic surveys can displace marine mammals, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, away from nurseries and foraging, mating, spawning, and migratory corridors. Seismic airgun surveys also have been shown to damage or kill fish and fish larvae and have been implicated in whale beaching and stranding incidents.

And these surveys will be occurring at and around some of the Atlantic’s most amazing submarine canyons. (“Ocean Oases” is a short NRDC film about the urgent need to protect the Atlantic Coast’s underwater canyons and seamounts.)

Cut into the Atlantic’s continental shelf is a series of vast undersea canyons, starting just north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and running up past Cape Cod. The canyons dive down thousands of feet over clay and stone cliffs before reaching the deep ocean bottom. The canyons host an amazing variety and abundance of marine life. Their hard foundations have allowed deep sea corals, rare sponges, and vivid anemones to grow and a bevy of fish and shellfish find food and shelter in these complex and dynamic environments. Endangered sperm whales, beaked whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals feed on congregating schools of squid and small fish. Commercial and recreational fishermen enjoy fishing the waters around the canyons. The types of coral and sponge communities in the seamounts and canyons have even yielded scientific and technological advances, including compounds for cancer treatments, models for artificial synthesis of human bone, and elements for constructing more durable optic cables.The canyons that would be impacted by seismic surveys in the Mid and South-Atlantic include Baltimore, Accomac, Washington, and Norfolk.

The oil and gas industry has not been allowed in these areas since drilling exploratory wells near several of the canyons in the early 1980s; Salazar’s announcement changes this.

We do need to plan ahead for our energy needs. Well-sited renewable energy shows much promise to help us keep the lights on at home. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we know the widespread ecological and economic devastation that can result from an offshore oil well blow-out. Even small oil spills can kill marine organisms and disrupt marine ecosystems. Properly sited offshore wind offers us a cleaner and safer way forward.

Our oceans support a host of jobs, food and recreation and we need to protect our ocean resources and allow these important services to continue into the future.

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http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/294755/after-long-delays-obama-takes-tiny-steps-toward-new-drilling

National Review

The Campaign Spot
Election-driven news and views . . . by Jim Geraghty.

After Long Delays, Obama Takes Tiny Steps Toward New Drilling
By Jim Geraghty
March 29, 2012 9:31 A.M.
1
Credit where it is due: President Obama’s Interior Department has taken a tiny step toward exploration for oil and natural gas off the coast of the Eastern seaboard from Delaware to Florida:
For the Atlantic, the administration released a draft environmental review outlining a 330,000-square-mile area from the Delaware Bay to Cape Canaveral, Fla., where seismic surveys could be conducted. The administration has no current plans to allow drilling in the Atlantic, though Mr. Salazar said that could change in light of the surveys.

Of course, this is after about a year’s delay. You can hear the “about time, guys” tone in the statement from Virginia governor Bob McDonnell:

It is encouraging that Secretary Salazar visited Virginia today to announce a small step forward in the development of our offshore energy resources. Unfortunately this small step forward follows many previous steps back. Virginia was poised to become the first state on the east coast to produce oil and natural gas offshore. This breakthrough would have led to the creation of thousands of new jobs in our state, generated significant new revenues for state and local governments, and led to more domestic energy production. Instead, this Administration cancelled Virginia’s scheduled lease sale for 2011, and pushed any possible lease sales to 2018, at the very earliest. With gas hitting $4 a gallon that seven-year self-ordered delay is more noticeable than ever. We should be looking for every opportunity to safely produce more domestic energy. Our citizens need the jobs; our nation needs the energy. Instead, the Obama Administration declared a seven-year timeout. That was the wrong decision. There is broad bipartisan support in Virginia for developing our offshore energy resources and Virginians support this common sense policy. We will continue to aggressively seek the lifting of these federal limitations on offshore oil and gas development. These decisions are leaving private capital that could be invested in expanding our domestic energy resources on the sidelines at a time when private investment in business expansion and job creation is so urgently needed to heal our ailing economy.
While we continue to be incredibly disappointed by last year’s decision, I do want to thank the Obama Administration for their announcement today.

Of course, seismic surveys are only the first step in developing any energy resources off the Eastern seaboard. Actually, I shouldn’t say any energy development; Virginia’s just given approval to another form that is supposed to be a source of bipartisan agreement.

Now it’s up to the federal government:
The Virginia Marine Resources Commission has voted unanimously to approve proposed construction of a 479-foot-tall, 5 MW offshore wind turbine generator prototype in the lower Chesapeake Bay, three miles off the coast of Cape Charles, Va. The construction of the prototype turbine is scheduled to be completed in late 2013, which could make this project one of the first offshore wind energy prototypes in the U.S.The wind power project now requires approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and review by the U.S. Coast Guard.

And one other bit of reasonably good news:
Separately, the Interior Department approved Royal Dutch Shell’s oil spill response plan for Alaska’s Beaufort Sea on Wednesday.Shell is working to begin drilling off Alaska’s coast this summer after repeated regulatory delays for the company’s Arctic exploration program. Shell will still need well-specific permits before it starts drilling. Interior approved Shell’s response plan for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea earlier this year.

So, after weeks of insisting that the U.S. can’t drill its way out of its gas-price problems, the administration takes a step to approve drilling in one previously verboten area and a tiny step towards drilling in another one. Why, it’s almost as if the line the president was touting on the trail proved to be erroneous, and suddenly reached its expiration date . . .

Special thanks to Richard Charter

https://www.data.boem.gov/homepg/data_center/other/gmaillist/subscribe.asp

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region

SPECIAL INFORMATION

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is the Federal agency responsible for managing offshore energy and mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). A Notice of Availability for the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was published in the Federal Register on March 30, 2012, and the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS has been distributed for a 60-day comment period ending on May 30, 2012.

The proposed action is to permit geological and geophysical (G&G) activities in support of oil and gas exploration and development, renewable energy, and marine minerals in the Mid- and South Atlantic Planning Areas. The Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS will be used by BOEM and other responsible agencies to comply with various environmental laws (e.g., Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, etc.).

Public meetings during the public comment period allow Federal, State, and local government agencies, and other interested parties to comment on the Draft Programmatic EIS and assist BOEM in developing the Final Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS.

The public meetings are scheduled as follows:

• Monday, April 16, 2012, Jacksonville, Florida: Jacksonville Marriott, 4760 Salisbury Road, Jacksonville, FL 32256; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Wednesday, April 18, 2012, Savannah, Georgia: Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Farm Street, Savannah, GA 31401; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Friday, April 20, 2012, Charleston, South Carolina: Embassy Suites North Charleston, 5055 International Boulevard, Charleston, SC 29418; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Tuesday, April 24, 2012, Norfolk, Virginia: Hilton Norfolk Airport, 1500 N. Military Highway, Norfolk, VA 23502; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Wednesday, April 25, 2012, Annapolis, Maryland: Doubletree Hotel Annapolis, 210 Holiday Court, Annapolis, MD 21401; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Thursday, April 26, 2012, Wilmington, North Carolina: Hilton Wilmington Riverside, 301 North Water Street, Wilmington, NC 28401; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT;

• Thursday, April 26, 2012, Wilmington, Delaware: Sheraton Suites Wilmington, 422 Delaware Avenue, Wilmington, DE 19801; two meetings, one beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT and one beginning at 7:00 p.m. EDT; and

• Friday, April 27, 2012, Atlantic City, New Jersey: Atlantic City Convention Center, One Convention Boulevard, Atlantic City, NJ, 08401; one meeting beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

If you cannot attend the meetings, you may submit written comments within the comment period. Comments should specifically address aspects of the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS and may be submitted in one of the following two ways:

1. In an envelope labeled “Comments on the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS” and mailed (or hand carried) to Mr. Gary D. Goeke, Chief, Regional Assessment Section, Office of Environment (MS 5410), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 1201 Elmwood Park Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana 70123-2394; or

2. BOEM email address: GGEIS@boem.gov.

The BOEM will be printing and distributing a very limited number of paper copies. In keeping with the Department of the Interior’s mission of protection of natural resources, and to limit costs while ensuring availability of the document to the public, BOEM will primarily distribute digital copies of the EIS on compact discs. However, if you require a paper copy, BOEM will provide one upon request if copies are still available.

1. You may obtain a copy of the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, 1201 Elmwood Park Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana 70123-2394, Attention: Public Information Office (MS 5034), 1201 Elmwood Park Boulevard, Room 250, New Orleans, Louisiana 70123-2394 (1-800-200-GULF).

2. You may download or view the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS on BOEM’s Atlantic G&G website at http://.boem.gov/and-Gas-Energy-Program//.aspx or on BOEM’s NEPA website at http://.boem.gov/Stewardship/Assessment//.aspx.

If you have any questions, you may call Mr. Gary D. Goeke at (504) 736-3233.

You are receiving this notification if you provided us with your email address at some point during scoping for the Draft Atlantic G&G Programmatic EIS. If you would like to receive announcements for public meetings and the availability of our environmental documents for Atlantic activities, please submit your name and contact information to BOEM at the website below. You may also request to be removed from the current BOEM mailing list in the same way.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iv89QKpZjnaph6QdlnsDtby41ltA?docId=82dca068b01949aeba9d768e2b79c8fd

Associated Press Report: Oil spill culprit for heavy toll on coral
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press – 52 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP’s blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull.

In a study published Monday, scientists say meticulous chemical analysis of samples taken in late 2010 proves that oil from BP PLC’s out-of-control Macondo well devastated corals living about 7 miles southwest of the well. The coral community is located over an area roughly the size of half a football field nearly a mile below the Gulf’s surface.
The damaged corals were discovered in October 2010 by academic and government scientists, but it’s taken until now for them to declare a definite link to the oil spill.

Most of the Gulf’s bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths. The injured and dying coral today has bare skeleton, loose tissue and is covered in heavy mucous and brown fluffy material, the paper said.

“It was like a graveyard of corals,” said Erik Cordes, a biologist at Temple University who went down to the site in the Alvin research submarine.

So far, this has been the only deep-sea coral site found to be seriously damaged by the spill.

On April 20, 2010, the well blew out about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, leading to the death of 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the nation’s largest offshore spill. More than 200 million gallons of oil were released.

“They figured (the coral damage) was the result of the spill, now we can say definitely it was connected to the spill,” said Helen White, a chemical oceanographer with Haverford College and the lead researcher.

She said pinpointing the BP well as the source of the contamination required sampling sediment on the sea floor and figuring out what was oil from natural seeps in the Gulf and what was from the Macondo well. Finally, the researchers matched the oil found on the corals with oil that came out of the BP well.

Also, the researchers concluded that the damage was caused by the spill because an underwater plume of oil was tracked passing by the site in June 2010. The paper also noted that a decade of deep-sea coral research in the Gulf had not found coral dying in this manner. The coral was documented for the first time when researchers went looking for oil damage in 2010.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists said that they have gone back to the dying corals by submarine since 2010, but that they are not ready to talk about what they’ve seen at the site.

However, Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who’s led the coral expeditions, said recovery of the damaged site would be slow.

“Things happen very slowly in the deep sea; the temperatures are low, currents are low, those animals live hundreds of years and they die slowly,” he said. “It will take a while to know the final outcome of this exposure.”

BP did not immediately comment on the study.

The researchers said the troubled spot consists of 54 coral colonies. The researchers were able to fully photograph and assess 43 of those colonies, and of those, 86 percent were damaged. They said 10 coral colonies showed signs of severe stress on 90 percent of the coral.

White, the lead researcher, said that this coral site was the only one found southwest of the Macondo well so far, but that others may exist. The researchers also wrote in the paper that it was too early to rule out serious damage at other coral sites that may have seemed healthy during previous examinations after the April 2010 spill.

Jerald Ault, a fish and coral reef specialist at the University of Miami who was not part of the study, said the findings were cause for concern because deep-sea corals are important habitat. He said there are many links between animals that live at the surface, such as tarpon and menhaden, and life at the bottom of the Gulf. Ecosystem problems can play out over many years, he said.

“It’s kind of a tangled web of impact,” he said.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/frothy-gunk-from-deepwater-horiz.html?ref=em

Science: ‘Frothy Gunk’ From Deepwater Horizon Spill Harming Corals
by Sid Perkins on 26 March 2012, 3:00 PM |

Blowout! Oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon (inset; satellite image shows extent of spill on 24 May 2010) injured deep-water corals at one spot about 11 kilometers from the well, new research reveals.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/MODIS Rapid Response, demis.nl and FT2; (inset) U.S. Coast Guard

The massive oil spill that inundated the Gulf of Mexico in the spring and summer of 2010 severely damaged deep-sea corals more than 11 kilometers from the well site, a sea-floor survey conducted within weeks of the spill reveals. Although 10 more distant sites examined during the survey did not show any ill effects, future studies will be needed to confirm that they did not suffer long-term detriment from any exposure to oil, scientists say.

Starting with an explosion onboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig on 20 April and continuing for 85 days, the worst oil spill in U.S. history released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil — about 20 times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.

Between 3 and 4 months after the well was capped, researchers used the deep submersible vehicle Alvin and the remotely-operated vehicle Jason II to revisit several sites along the continental shelf known to host corals, says Charles Fisher, a team member and deep-sea biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

The researchers also used previously collected sonar data to identify a possibly rocky patch of sea floor where corals could thrive about 11 kilometers southwest of the well site.

At that 1370-meter-deep site, which hadn’t been visited before but had been right in the path of a submerged 100-meter-thick oil plume from the spill, the researchers found a variety of corals-most of them belonging to a type of colonial coral commonly known as sea fans-on a 10-meter-by-12-meter outcrop of rock. Nearby, boulders poking up through the sediment hosted isolated colonies of coral. Many of the corals were partially or completely covered with a brown, fluffy substance that Fisher variously calls “frothy gunk,” “goop,” and “snot.”

Samples of the material contained mucus secreted by the corals-a sign the colonies had recently been under stress-as well as fragments of dead coral polyps, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids commonly found in biological tissues such as cell membranes, and a mélange of petroleum residues. Although the chemicals related to petroleum-including long-chain hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and a group of compounds known as hopanoids-could have originated from other oil wells or natural sea floor seeps in the area, measurements of the ratios of specific hopanoids identify the Deepwater Horizon spill as the source of the oil, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s like a fingerprint,” says Helen White, a geochemist at Haverford College in Pennsylvania and a co-author of the new research.

In almost half of the 43 corals studied at the site, the majority of animals had died or were showing signs of stress, the researchers say. And in more than one-quarter of the corals, more than 90% of the animals showed such damage. Also, more than half of the brittle stars, a relative of starfish, found clinging to the sea fans were partially or completely bleached white, another certain sign of stress, says Fisher.

The new findings “show clearly the very negative effects in deep-water communities from this spill,” says Samantha Joye, a biogeochemist at the University of Georgia in Athens who wasn’t involved in the research. The true extent of damage from the spill is, for now, tough to determine because so much of the sea floor hasn’t been examined, she notes. “The deeper you look, the more you’re going to find.”

Also, Joye notes, areas that weren’t immediately damaged by oil plumes in the wake of the spill may be later exposed to oily material lofted from the ocean floor by strong currents or by human activities such as trawling. “This stuff is like the foam on a latte,” she says. “It’s very fluffy.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120322/us-cuba-oil-drilling/

JENNIFER KAY | March 22, 2012 05:40 PM EST |

MIAMI – If a future oil spill in the Caribbean Sea threatens American shores, a new federal plan obtained by The Associated Press would hinge on cooperation from neighboring foreign governments. Now that Cuba is the neighbor drilling for oil, cooperation is hard to guarantee.

The International Offshore Response Plan draws on lessons from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and was created to stop offshore oil spills as close to their source as possible, even in foreign waters. The plan dated Jan. 30 has not been released publicly. The AP obtained a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request.
After crude oil stained Gulf Coast beaches, state and federal officials are eager to head off even the perception of oil spreading toward the coral reefs, beaches and fishing that generate tens of billions of tourist dollars for Florida alone.

The plan comes as Spanish oil company Repsol YPF conducts exploratory drilling in Cuban waters and the Bahamas considers similar development for next year. Complicating any oil spill response in the Florida Straits, though, is the half-century of tension between the U.S. and its communist neighbor 90 miles south of Florida.

Under the plan dated Jan. 30, the Coast Guard’s Miami-based 7th District would take the lead in responding to a spill affecting U.S. waters, which includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The district’s operations cover 15,000 miles of coastline and share borders with 34 foreign countries and territories.

Repsol’s operations in Cuban waters are not subject to U.S. authority, but the company allowed U.S. officials to inspect its rig and review its own oil spill response plan.

“We’ve demonstrated already and we continue to demonstrate that we’re a safe, responsible operator doing all in its power to carry out a transparent and safe operation,” Respol spokesman Kristian Rix said Thursday.

Rix declined to elaborate on the company’s response plans, but he did say two minor recommendations made by U.S. officials inspecting the rig were immediately put in place.
If an oil spill began in Cuban waters, Cuba would be responsible for any spill cleanup and efforts to prevent damage to the U.S., but the Coast Guard would respond as close as possible.

Though a 50-year-old embargo bars most American companies from conducting business with Cuba and limits communication between the two governments, the Coast Guard and private response teams have licenses from the U.S. government to work with Cuba and its partners if a disaster arises.

The U.S. and Cuba have joined Mexico, the Bahamas and Jamaica since November in multilateral discussions about how the countries would notify each other about offshore drilling problems, said Capt. John Slaughter, chief of planning, readiness, and response for the 7th District.

He said channels do exist for U.S. and Cuban officials to communicate about spills, including the Caribbean Island Oil Pollution Response and Cooperation Plan. That’s a nonbinding agreement, though, so the Coast Guard has begun training crews already monitoring the Cuban coastline for drug and migrant smuggling to keep an eye out for problems on the Repsol rig.

William Reilly, co-chairman of the national commission on the Deepwater Horizon spill and head of the EPA during President George H.W. Bush, said the Coast Guard generated goodwill in Cuba by notifying its government of potential risks to the island during the 2010 spill.

It would be hard for the Cuban government to keep any spill secret if Repsol and other private companies were responding, Slaughter said.

“Even if we assume the darkest of dark and that the Cuban government wouldn’t notify us, we’d hear through industry chatter and talk. If the companies were notified, I’m quite confident we would get a phone call before they fly out their assets,” he said.

Funding for a U.S. response to a foreign spill would come from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund managed by the Coast Guard. As of Feb. 29, that fund contained $2.4 billion.

The plan covers many lessons learned from the 2010 spill, like maintaining a roster of “vessels of opportunity” for hire and making sure the ships that are skimming and burning oil offshore can store or treat oily water for extended periods of time. Other tactics, like laying boom, have been adapted for the strong Gulf Stream current flowing through the Florida Straits.

What the plan doesn’t cover is the research on how an oil spill might behave in the straits, said Florida International University professor John Proni, who’s leading a group of university and federal researchers studying U.S. readiness for oil spills.

Among the unknowns are the effect of dispersants on corals and mangroves, how oil travels in the major currents, the toxicity of Cuban and how to determine whether oil washing ashore in the U.S. came from Cuba.

“My view is that the Coast Guard has developed a good plan but it’s based on existing information,” so it’s incomplete, he said.

Former Amoco Oil Latin America president Jorge Pinon, now an oil expert at the University of Texas, said the Coast Guard had a solid plan.

He cautioned against recent congressional legislation introduced by one of South Florida’s three Cuban-American representatives to curtail drilling off Cuba by sanctioning those who help them do it. The bill is sponsored by Republican U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.

Instead, Pinon said the U.S. needs to formalize agreements with Cuba about who would be in command if an oil well blew, because the U.S. has more resources available.

“The issue is not to stop the spill from reaching Florida waters, the issue is capping the well and shutting it down,” Pinon said. “We can play defense all we want, but we don’t want to play defense, we want to play offense, we want to cap the well.”

Reilly said the U.S. still needs to issue permits for equipment in the U.S. that would be needed if a Cuban well blew, Reilly said. For example, if a blowout occurred, the company would have to get a capping stack from Scotland, which could take up to a week.

“We know from Macondo that a great deal can happen in a week,” Reilly said. “I’ve been very concerned about getting the sanctions interpreted in a way that permits us to exercise some common sense.”

__________Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6084508

Washington (Platts)–22Mar2012/1237 pm EDT/1637 GMT
After defending his approach to oil and gas development for five weeks, President Barack Obama traveled to the heart of the US oil pipeline network Thursday and promised to accelerate permitting for TransCanada’s Oklahoma-to-Texas pipeline.

Obama signed a memorandum directing heads of executive departments and agencies to expedite their review of the southern section of TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The Oklahoma-to-Texas line primarily needs local and state support, not approvals from the White House or from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees siting of natural gas, not oil, pipelines. Obama did not explain how his executive order would speed the review. Oilgram News brings fast-breaking global petroleum and gas news to your desktop every day. Our extensive global network of correspondents report on supply and demand trends, corporate news, government actions, exploration, technology, and much more.

Obama spoke in front of sections of 36-inch pipe that TransCanada contractors will eventually string together across 485 miles from Cushing to Nederland, Texas. The line will link the Cushing crude hub to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

“We are drilling all over the place right now,” Obama said a day after visiting drilling rigs in New Mexico. “That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem. The problem in a place like Cushing is that we’re producing so much oil and gas in places like North Dakota and Colorado and that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it to places it needs to go.”

Cushing calls itself the “pipeline crossroads of the world” and is the delivery point for the NYMEX crude contract.

TransCanada, which has taken a decidedly low profile during the president’s visit to its own pipe yard, has dubbed Keystone XL’s southern portion the Gulf Coast Project. The company expects it to cost $2.3 billion and hopes to start oil flowing in the second half of 2013.

In his speech, the president mentioned his rejection two months earlier of TransCanada’s application to build the full 1,700-mile system from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, but again blamed that decision on Congress imposing an unreasonable deadline on the process.
ENERGY POLICY IN ELECTION YEAR SPOTLIGHT

Obama has devoted at least one speech a week to energy policy since February 23, when gasoline prices began setting record highs and started to threaten his election-year approval ratings.

The Cushing speech did not expand on standard White House talking points about energy that Obama has overseen an expansion of oil and gas drilling, shrinking dependence on OPEC and falling US consumption through fuel efficiency standards.

Obama’s promise to accelerate the Gulf Coast Project was not even uncharted ground. When TransCanada announced on February 27 its plans to push forward with the southern section despite the Keystone XL rejection weeks earlier, the White House said it looked “forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner, and we commit to take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits.”

The oil industry did not greet Obama’s visit to its home turf especially warmly.

“Mr. President, your words suggest you want the economic benefits American natural gas and oil can deliver,” chief executives of Oklahoma oil and gas exploration companies Continental Resources, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy and SandRidge Energy said in an open letter published Wednesday in The Oklahoman newspaper. “We hope your actions follow suit — to date they have not.”

Likewise, pipeline supporters and oil-state lawmakers in Congress have spent the week bashing the president’s energy record.

Senator Richard Lugar, Republican-Indiana, said Obama’s “public relations exercise” in Cushing does nothing to change his “incomprehensible obstructionism” against the larger project.

“I’m glad that President Obama went to Cushing to see the mess he has in part caused,” Lugar said in a statement ahead of the speech. “If the Obama administration had acted on Keystone XL within a reasonable time frame to approve the application, then it most likely would already be delivering surplus oil supplies from Cushing to Gulf Coast refineries and would soon be delivering Canadian and US Bakken oil to American motorists.”
KEYSTONE XL OPPONENT SAYS CUSHING STOP HIGHLIGHTS OIL ‘ADDICTION’

Bill McKibben, whose group 350.org turned Keystone XL into the environmental movement’s chief rallying point last summer, said Obama’s visit to the pipeline yard would become an icon for inaction on climate change.

“No movie producer, 50 years from now, will be able to resist a scene that explains the depth of our addiction to oil: the president coming to the state that just recorded the hottest summer in American history, in the very week that the nation has seen the weirdest heat wave in its history, and promising not to slow down climate change but instead to speed up the building of pipelines,” he said.

McKibben’s group encouraged Keystone XL opponents to protest Obama’s visit to Ohio State University Thursday afternoon.

TransCanada plans to reapply to the US government for a permit to build the cross-border section of Keystone XL, which would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. It would link up with the existing Keystone pipeline to connect to Cushing.

While it has not submitted the application, the company estimates approval of the key US permit in the first quarter of 2013. It twice pushed back its completion target, now set at early 2015. Obama also signed a more general executive order calling for quicker federal permitting of major infrastructure projects, including pipelines, renewable energy plants, electricity transmission, roads, ports, waterways and broadband.

–Meghan Gordon, meghan_gordon@platts.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter