http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/160965-overnight-energy
By Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman- 05/12/11 07:44PM ET

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Bromwich, the Interior Department’s top offshore drilling regulator, is warning that a GOP-led bill to speed up Gulf of Mexico oil-and-gas lease sales is a recipe for a legal mess.

The House has passed a trio of bills over the last week aimed at speeding up offshore drilling permits, accelerating delayed Gulf of Mexico lease sales and opening big swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling.

In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Hill,  Bromwich – who leads Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement – had this to say about the bill that sets deadlines for Gulf sales:

“The one to accelerate lease sales … would be, I think, struck down by the courts because the [bill] mandates us to rely on pre-Deepwater Horizon NEPA,” he said in reference to National Environmental Policy Act analyses conducted before the BP oil spill.

“Well, that’s sort of a suicide pact, where we’re going to go in, we’re going to be forced to do lease sales with inadequate environmental analysis and we’ll be enjoined from those lease sales.Who wins then? Nobody,” he added of the bill that passed last week (more on the bills below).

Check out The Hill in print and online Friday for more from our exclusive interview.

Bromwich also went after the bill that sets new deadlines for his agency to act on industry offshore drilling permit applications. He defended the pace of deepwater permits the agency has been approving and noted that as of Thursday it has issued 14 permits for unique deepwater wells since Feb. 28.  “What [the GOP-led permitting bill] would do is it would tie our people up in paperwork because they have 30 days, and then if it’s not approved within 30 days they have to return it with a detailed explanation of why they turned it down, identifying the people who were involved in doing the analysis,” Bromwich said.

“That is a prescription for tying this agency up in red tape, when in fact our people are proceeding at a good and fair pace, and if you talk to people in industry candidly, they are quite pleased right now with the pace of our permitting. Of course they’d like it to speed up a bit. They always want it to speed up a bit,” hesaid.

The White House opposes the bills.

What’s next for Bromwich? Here’s a bit more that didn’t make it into our piece coming out tomorrow:

Bromwich isn’t saying what he’ll do after the completion of Interior’s offshore structural overhaul, which is slated to occur by Oct. 1. BOEMRE will be cleaved into two separate agencies: one that promotes resource development offshore and a separate branch to enforce environmental and safety regulations.

“I’m focusedon making the reorganization be as successful as it could possibly be. We are on track to have the reorganization be complete by Oct. 1, but I’m really focused on that and have thought very little about what’s going to become of me and what I do after that,”  Bromwich said.

The internal reception: Bromwich, who was appointed last June,  has also faced challenges inside the agency that he’s tasked with reforming (and is careful to note that the level of corruption that existed inside the agency has been overstated).   “I became very quickly aware that my background caused people concern, and the way I was announced caused people some concern. I was going to clean up this agency,”  the former Justice Department inspector general said.

But Bromwich believes that the concerns have eased as the overhaul has taken root.   He said: “I think people have come to understand the rationale behind the reorganization, they understand its logic. What I think we encountered at the outset was a kind of defensive resistance you get to most proposals for major change in any organization, but as we have walked through and talked through the logic of the reorganization and people understand that it is designed to help everybody, it is designed to eliminate the institutional conflicts of interest that have existed for 30 years, and that people are going to be able to go about their daily work in an environment that is actually better to do the work than has been the case before, I think all of that has calmed things.”

NEWS BITES:

Republicans pass final component of offshore drilling package: House Republicans scored their final victory in a broad effort to pass legislation aimed at expanding domestic offshore oil drilling Thursday.

The House GOP approved the third bill in their three-part domestic oil production plan Thursday afternoon. The bill would open up new areas in the Pacific andAtlantic coasts, as well as off the coast of Alaska, to drilling.

Read more about the passage of the other two bills in the Republican drilling package here.

The bills, authored by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings(R-Wash.),  have very little chance of passing the Senate and being signed into law by President Obama. But their passage represents a political victory for Republicans, who have long-criticized the Obama administration’s offshore drilling policies.

Shaheen, Portman introduce efficiency bill: Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) introduced energy efficiency legislation Thursday that would boost Energy Department loan guarantees for building efficiency and put in place new standards foroutdoor lighting and heating and cooling systems, among other things.  “This is a bipartisan effort to advance energy efficiency, one of the quickest and most affordable ways to lower energy costs for employers and consumers,” Portman said in a statement.

ON TAP THURSDAY:

* Energy Secretary Steven Chu will travel to Los Angeles Friday to “to celebrate the city’s success in electric vehicle and EV infrastructure deployment,” according to the EnergyDepartment.
* The House Science Committee will hold a hearing on “Nuclear Energy Risk Management.”
* EPA air chief Gina McCarthy will testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee during a hearing on a bill to speed up permitting of drilling off Alaska’s coast.
* Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey and Michael Bromwich, the Interior Department’s top offshore drilling regulator, are slatedto testify at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on “roadblocks” to developing wind and solar on public lands.
* Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) will hold a press conference with Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform on their “opposition to all energy subsidies.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED ITŠ.

Here’s a quick roundup of Thursday’s E2 stories:

– Oil executives blasted an effort by Senate Democrats to cut tax breaks
– Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) accused the GOP of  ‘protecting’ oil companies
– The CEO of Exxon Mobil called Democrats’ effort to repeal oil industry tax breaks “misinformed and discriminatory”
– Senate Democrats slammed ConocoPhillips for calling the tax breaks plan “un-American”
– House Energyand Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) won’t rule out using the debt ceiling as a vehicle to thwart climate rules
– Senate Democrats clashed with oil executives over oil tax breaks
– House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he would consider scrapping oil tax breaks as part of a broad effort to cut the corporate tax rate
– The House passed a bill to expand offshore drilling
Please send tips and comments to Ben Geman, ben.geman@thehill.com, and AndrewRestuccia, arestuccia@thehill.com.

Follow us onTwitter: @E2Wire, @AndrewRestuccia, @Ben_Geman

 

Special thanks to Richard Charter

tp://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-12/house-passes-bill-to-add-u-s-areas-for-offshore-drilling.html

May 12, 2011,4:01 PM EDT

By Jim Snyder
(Updates with comment from Young in fourth paragraph.)

May 12 (Bloomberg) — The Republican-controlled U.S. House passed legislation to open areas to oil drilling along the Atlantic, Southern California and Alaska coasts, the third bill approved to boost output as gasoline prices reach $4 a gallon.

The legislation was approved by a 243-179 vote, with 21 Democrats in favor, hours after oil company executives appeared at a Senate hearing to defend $21 billion in tax breaks that Democrats want to repeal to reduce the federal deficit.

Republicans have focused on expanding offshore production to lower gas prices. The House bill would require the U.S. to increase production goals to 3 million barrels of oil a day by 2027, and open areas now off-limits to oil and gas companies.

“Even in the face of rising gasoline prices, the president wants to drill nowhere new,” Representative Don Young, an Alaskan Republican, said when debate on the measure began yesterday. “This bill says:’Let’s move forward with leasing and drilling in those areas where we know America has real and significant resources.'”

Congress let a drilling ban along much of the outer continental shelf expire in 2008 after gas prices exceeded $4 a gallon. President Barack Obama said in March 2010 that he supported expanding offshore drilling. He withdrew the plan after an explosion 20 days later aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and triggered the BP Plc spill, the worst in U.S. waters.

Safety Reforms

Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Congress should pass safety reforms in response to the spill. Residents in states where offshore drilling would be allowed “don’t want oil coming in the way it did in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said yesterday.

The House has now passed three measures aimed at expanding U.S. oil and gas production. Lawmakers last week passed a bill requiring lease sales in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off of Virginia’s coastline. Yesterday, it passed legislation forcing the Interior Department to rule on drilling permits within 60 days. The permit would be approved if the deadline expired without action.

The administration said it opposes all three measures, without issuing a veto threat. The bills must pass the Democrat- controlled Senate to become law, and the chamber isn’t considering similar measures.

Expanding drilling won’t affect gas prices, which are set by a global market, Democrats said.

Senate Hearing

In the Senate today, executives from Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal DutchShell Plc, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP said production costs may rise and gasoline prices increase if Democrats succeed in stripping the tax breaks, including a $13 billion credit for manufacturing.

The plan is “counterproductive,” Exxon’s Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson told the Senate Finance Committee at the hearing. More money could be generated through royalty payments to the government under new leases than in repealing the breaks, the executives said.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, accused the officials of being “out of touch” in defending what Democrats say are unnecessary breaks given industry profits.
Exxon reported net income of $10.7 million during the first three months of the year.

The average gasoline price was $3.984 yesterday, up from $2.896 a year earlier, according to AAA’s daily fuel report.

–Editors: Steve Geimann, Larry Liebert
To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington atjsnyder24@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert atlliebert@bloomberg.net.

_________________________________

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpps/news/house-votes-to-expand-offshore-drilling-dpgonc-20110512-ch_13176209

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Chairman Bingaman has introduced two bills to address important areas of our nation’s energy policy: S. 916, the Oil and Gas Facilitation Act of 2011, and S. 917, the Outer Continental Shelf Reform Act of2011. Both are based on bipartisan, largely consensus work in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during the last Congress.

S. 916, the Oil and Gas Facilitation Act, is intended to enhance efficient and appropriate domestic production of oil and gas and to limit the dependence of the United States on foreign sources of oil. It addresses production issues in a variety of ways, including requiring a comprehensive inventory of the oil and natural gas under the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf to inform decisions about where leasing is likely to be most productive; and improvement of the coordination and efficiency of the permitting process for development on federal lands and waters.

S. 917, the Outer Continental Shelf Reform Act, is a verbatim reproduction of S.3516, reported unanimously by the Energy Committee in the last Congress. Its goal is to create a culture of excellence within the regulatory agency and the industry that benefits those who work in the oil industry, those who depend on other marine resources, and all Americans who care deeply about our energy resources, our communities and our marine environment.

Because of the widespread support for this bill, it has been reintroduced exactly as reported last year, providing a good place to start work this year. It will need updating to reflect subsequent events and information from the National Oil Spill Commission and various experts about some refinements that should be made. Chairman Bingaman has been working with Senator Murkowski and others who supported last year’s bill, and will be continuing those discussions. Given the importance of the issue, the bipartisanship that animated the Committee’s work on this issue last year during the oil spill is something that we expect to continue.

The Committee’s work on this legislation will begin with a hearing to be scheduled for next week. Chairman Bingaman hopes to be able to move to Committee markup before the Memorial Day recess. Here is his introductory floor speech:

“Mr. President, yesterday I introduced two bills on subjects of great importance to our national energy policy: the Oil and Gas Facilitation Act of 2011 and the Outer Continental Shelf Reform Act of 2011. Both are basedon bipartisan, largely consensus work in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during the last Congress.

“I should note that these important issues are being addressed in separate bills consciously and for a reason. In the past we have crafted comprehensive energy bills that attempt to address all the energy policy issues of the day in one vehicle. There are obvious advantages to that, but there are well-documented disadvantages as well, and I would like to avoid those this year in furtherance of completing our important work.

“There is no disagreement in the Senate about the need to have robust and responsible domestic production of oil and gas. At the same time, there is probably considerable disagreement about how best to address that issue. We need to begin work on that.

“However, ensuring the safety and viability of our operations on the Outer Continental Shelf is a separate matter that deserves attention on its own. The question of how we undertake oil and gas exploration and production on the Outer Continental Shelf appropriately stands apart from the question of where we undertake those activities.

“I do not believe that it would make sense to try to trade off safety or environmental protections against the issue of access, for example. I believe that the Congress should set an appropriate level of safety and environmental compliance regardless of where oil and gas exploration and production is occurring.

“I will also observe that there was much greater consensus on the need to reform the rules governing Outer Continental Shelf production in the last Congress than on other issues such as those related to access to particular areas. Conflating these separate issues into one bill is not likely to be the best path to success in enacting a bill into public law.

“That is not to say that we don’t have a responsibility to address both issue areas. We do. But I believe they should be addressed on parallel tracks, and not in combination. I hope to be able to move toward Committee consideration of both of these bills this month.

“The first, the Oil and Gas Facilitation Act, is intended to enhance efficient and appropriate domestic production of oil and gas and to limit the dependence of the United States on foreign sources of oil.

“The last two years have been a time of real success in increasing our domestic production of both oil and gas, and in reducing our reliance on imported oil. We are currently the third largest producer of oil in the world. The percentage of the oil we use that is imported has declined from 60 percent in 2008 to about 51.5 percent in 2009 and to about 49 percent in 2010. We want to be sure that we continue this progress while protecting our other natural resources and our communities’ health and safety.

“This bill addresses production issues in a variety of ways. It requires a comprehensive inventory of the oil and natural gas under the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf to inform decisions about where leasing is likely to be most productive. To improve the efficiency of the permitting process for development on federal lands and waters, permit coordination offices are reauthorized, and a new coordination office is established for the Alaska region of the Outer Continental Shelf.

“Two provisions facilitate the transportation of Alaska’s abundant oil and gas resources. The amount of federal guarantee instruments is increased to support the construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline; and the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline system is exempted from certain requirements that unnecessarily slow the permitting process.

“Co-production of geothermal energy by existing oil and gas leaseholders is encouraged by making leases available for that purpose on a non-competitive basis.

“Finally, the bill will potentiallyc ontribute millions to the Federal Treasury by repealing the current law that requires the Secretary of Interior to give relief from royalty payments to certain offshore oil and gas production. The bill would allow the Secretary to provide such relief in appropriate circumstances, but would not require such relief. This avoids inappropriate giveaways of taxpayer-owned oil and gas resources to industry when it is unnecessary for robust domestic production.

“These provisions are drawn almost verbatim from S. 1462, reported by the Committee on a bipartisan basis in the last Congress. The one significant change is that certain funding for the offshore oil and gas inventory provided by S. 1462 was redirected by the Committee in subsequent legislation to be used for research on safety issues related to offshore oil and gas drilling. To avoid spending the same money twice, we have eliminated that funding here so that it could be included in offshore safety legislation. At the same time, the bill retains the authorization of significant appropriations to be used for the oil and gas inventory.

“The Outer Continental Shelf Reform Act, the other bill I am introducing today, is a verbatim reproduction of S. 3516, reported unanimously by the Committee in the last Congress. Because of the widespread support for this bill, I have reintroduced it exactly as reported since I believe this is a good place to begin our work this year. It will need a bit of updating as we move forward. A few of the provisions have largely been overtaken by events, and we have learned from the National Oil Spill Commission and others about some refinements that should be made.

“I have been having discussions with Senator Murkowski and others who supported last year’s bill, and will be continuing those discussions as we move forward. I would hope that we will have the same strong bipartisan support for these efforts as we did last year when we reported this bill during the midst of the worst oil spill in our nation’s history. Our commitment to responsible operations in the Gulf and protection of our citizens and communities should be well understood by all.

“This bill is intended to respect those who lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon accident and the people of the Gulf who have suffered serious economic and emotional harm by doing what we can to create a better future. It is the particular responsibility of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to look to the future of the regulatory agency and the industry. As I said last year when we introduced this bill, our goal must be, of course, to prevent future disasters. But we can and must do more than that.

“Congress should create organizational resources and a set of requirements that will have safety, environmental protection, and innovation at their core. We should require that both industry and agency employees have the expertise, experience, and commitment to quality necessary to handle the complex issues involved. We should set principles in place to create a culture of excellence for the regulatory agency and for the industry that will be a model for the world.

“Thus, this bill reforms the structure of the offices of the Department of the Interior dealing with offshore oil and gas leasing and development to avoid organizational conflicts of interest. It clarifies the breadth of the Department’s responsibilities in managing the resources of the Outer Continental Shelf.

“It increases the safety requirements for exploration, well drilling, and production. It mandates use of best available technology, an evidentiary safety case, and a risk management system that identifies and addresses hazards in advance andmanages for change. It provides for third party review by qualified parties outside the agency of key equipment and well design.

“It addresses the essential need for the Department of the Interior to have in-house research capacity on both the safety and the marine environment issues necessary for the exercise of its regulatory authority. Research departments in these areas will no longer be optional, but are required, and funding is redirected from other areas of research to ensure that this will happen.

“In order to ensure that the rules are enforced, the bill requires collection of fees from industry to fully fund the necessary teams of inspectors. It provides for independent investigations of accidents and the sharing of data so that all can learn from mistakes. It also provides the Department of the Interior with adequate time to carry out necessary reviews and makes the input of other Federal agencies occur in a transparent way. And it increases the civil and criminal penalties applicable to violations of the law and regulations.

“I believe these policies and resources can set us on a new and constructive path toward managing the incredible natural resources of the Outer Continental Shelf. We must recommit ourselves to the goal of excellence in this important endeavor. The fact that oil is no longer gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in no way diminishes the importance of this work.

“Both of these bills address issues of great national importance. We will shortly be scheduling necessary hearings and preparing these bills for Committee consideration — if at all possible before the Memorial Day recess. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in the rest of the Senate on a bipartisan basis – as we have in the past – to address the vital issues presented by both of these bills.

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of both bills be printed in the RECORD.”

# # #

For more information, please contact Bill Wicker at 202.224.5243 orbill_wicker@energy.senate.gov

or Rosemarie Calabro at 202.224.5039 orrosemarie_calabro@energy.senate.gov

Visit our website at http://energy.senate.gov/

Special thanks to Richard Charter

By Amy Harder

Monday, May 9, 2011 |9:35 p.m.

Senate Democrats willunveil legislation on Tuesday that repeals tax breaks for the largestoil and gas companies. The politically charged move comes on the sameday that the GOP-led House votes on the second of three billsexpanding domestic drilling. The vote on the last one is expectedlater this week.

Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri will hold a press conference on Tuesday morning to announce the bill. They have introduced similar versions in previous sessions of Congress and even earlier this year.The legislation repeals tax breaks for the biggest oil and gas companies and puts the money toward deficit reduction.

The bill will likely be the one that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brings to the floor, signaling that he has decided not to move forward with a plan that Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., floatedl ast month. Baucus’s plan also repeals the tax breaks for thel argest oil and gas companies. But it would have diverted the money to fund clean-energy technologies. By putting the money back into deficit reduction, the Democratic leadership is trying to put Republicans in a tough political position by forcing them to vote on a bill that would repeal tax breaks for the benefit of reducing the debt. By reallocating the money to another set of energy subsidies, Democrats worry that the political messaging would get muddled.

Reid and his office have not indicated when he will bring the bill to the floor, but it likely won’t be until next week at the earliest. It will likely fail, given that efforts to repeal the breaks within the past year have failed. Although the political rhetoric against Big Oil has risen since those votes, it’s likely still not enough to get 60 votes.

Brown and McCaskill are emblematic of the vulnerable Democratic class up for reelection in2012. Brown previewed the introduction of the bill at a press conference at an Ohio gas station on Monday. Menendez is also up for reelection, but he is not as big of a target as Brown and McCaskill, because they both hail from energy-intensive swing states.

The debate over the tax breaks will continue later this week with a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday, where top executives from the five major oil companies are expected to testify.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/lessons-not-learned

MAY/JUNE 2011 ISSUE

Magazine: Currents

May 1, 2011 |Ethan Goffman |

A green sea turtle is released in the Gulf of Mexico after being treated for oil exposure from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Photos: © u.s.coast guard

By EthanGoffman

An array of shortcomings and missteps led to the Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which happened one year ago this past April. They include lax regulation, inadequate cement, blowout preventer failure and a poorly coordinated response. So says the final report of The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, released on January 11. Not only BP, but the other companies involved with drilling and maintaining the well-Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd.-were found negligent,leading the report to characterize the problems as “systemic.” Such an accident, it seems, was waiting to happen.

Jackie Savitz, a senior scientist for the ocean advocacy group Oceana, called the commission’s report “a scathing analysis” that details numerous preventable mistakes. BP and other companies, she notes, “failed the negative pressure test but kept going. They didn’t have enough centralizers, they tested cement that failed, but they went ahead.” Furthermore, argues Richard Charter, the senior policy advisor for Defenders of Wildlife’s marine programs, “the mistakes made were compounded both before and after, indicating a culture of carelessness.”

And the results are still being felt. Between April 22 when the offshore Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, sank and began gushing oil, and the following July when the well was capped, more than 4.5 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf. In February 2011, Salon reported that scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia found sea floors in the Gulf that were still coated with oil from the spill-and oil-choked sea creatures including dead crabs, tube worms and brittle stars littered the ocean floor.

To minimize the risk of future catastrophic spills, the commission recommended increased government oversight, promoting a culture of safety within the industry, better practices for well integrity and tests for blowout preventers, and increased liability from today’s extremely low $75 million limit. Explains Oil Spill Commissioner Donald Boesch: “These recommendations are a blueprint for vastly improved safety. Our investigation was extremely comprehensive. . . we provided a detailed account of the various mistakes or bad decisions both on the Deepwater Horizon and onshore.” Charter agrees, noting that the key points are to increase redundant systems, to develop better clean-up capacity including better skimmers and to account for the toxicity of dispersants.

But Savitz calls the recommendations “tepid” in light of the devastating impact of oil spills. “I felt like the commission was empowered to come up with bolder recommendations,” she says. “We need more out-of-the-box thinking.” She points out that deep-sea drilling accounts for only 8% of the oil we use and believes that a permanent moratorium is the answer. Oceana’s “Vision 2020” plan outlines ways to lower our crude oil use 26% by 2020 by moving some oil uses, such as heating, to electricity; encouraging electric cars; increasing use of biofuels, particularly algal and switch grass; and improving energy efficiency.

But offshore drilling will almost certainly continue despite serious deficiencies. Charter warns that accident response has not kept pace with conditions in the increasingly difficult drilling environments. “This entire technology has outstripped its response capability,” he says. “It’s archaic compared to the space-age technology for finding and extracting oil.” Currently, the situation is at a standoff; Although the moratorium has been lifted, permits for new wells are not being granted. Yet incessant demand for oil, together with industry pressure, make it likely that drilling will continue. Indeed, as oil prices surged in February and March, the interior department granted the first new deepwater permit since the disaster and announced the likelihood of more to come.

Arguing for the permits, Carlton Carroll of the American Petroleum Institute says: “API and the industry have already taken numerous, concrete actions since the accident to identify and implement additional safeguards.” For “the first time,” he adds, “it has committed to develop the capacity to contain a deepwater blowout.”

But Charter worries about where deepwater drilling might head next-particularly Bristol Bay, Alaska, and the Arctic Ocean, where a similar spill could bring even more horrific consequences. Oil that makes its way beneath the sea ice would be virtually impossible to clean up. While U.S. regulators are currently withholding permits for such drilling, there’s increased pressure for it to move forward as the Gulf tragedy recedes in our collective consciousness.

CONTACTS: Defenders of Wildlife; The National Commission on the BP Deepwater HorizonOil Spill; OceanaVision 2020; RestoretheGulf.gov.

ETHAN GOFFMAN is an environmental writer in the Washington, D.C. region and associate editor of Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy.

Special thanks to Richard Charter