http://www.insidebayarea.com/breaking-news/ci_22231457/obama-expand-national-marine-sanctuaries-permanently-ban-oil

By Paul Rogers progers@mercurynews.com
Posted: 12/20/2012 08:38:27 AM PST
Updated: 12/20/2012 09:34:51 AM PST

In a move that would permanently ban oil drilling along more than 50 miles of Northern California coast, the Obama administration is scheduled this morning to announce plans to expand two northern California marine sanctuaries, extending them up the rugged Sonoma and Mendocino Coast.

The announcement, scheduled at an 11:15 am PST news conference in Washington D.C., with members of the Bay Area congressional delegation and officials from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will mark the largest expansion of national marine sanctuaries in California in 20 years — since President George. H.W. Bush established the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 1992.

The new protected area will enlarge of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries by 2,771 square miles, more than doubling their size, and will extend from Bodega Bay near the Marin County-Sonoma County border north to Point Arena in Mendocino County.

The area is one of the West’s most scenic coastal landscapes, famous for its steep cliffs, rugged wind-swept bluffs and long sandy beaches. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, oil companies showed interest in sinking new rigs off the area, which includes the communities of Jenner, Sea Ranch and Gualala, along with Fort Ross, a former Russian fur-trading outpost dating back to 1812.
“The waters off the northern California coast are incredibly nutrient-rich and drive the entire natural
system and, for almost a decade, local communities have been petitioning their elected officials to expand sanctuary protection to these areas,” said Daniel J. Basta, director of the NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

In recent months, retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-San Rafael, led efforts to urge Obama to create a new national monument along the scenic Sonoma coast using his executive authority. Obama declined to create a monument and instead used the NOAA administrative process, which requires public hearings and environmental studies and is expected to take months, if not a year, to finalize.

The reason: President George W. Bush used executive authority to create a marine monument in the remote Northern Hawaiian islands during his presidency, upsetting some Gulf of Mexico senators who were concerned the authority might one day be used by presidents to ban oil drilling there, an administration source said Thursday. As a result, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco said during her confirmation hearings several years ago that the Obama administration would not create national monuments in the oceans, but instead use existing NOAA rules.

NOAA has the authority, without a vote of Congress, to enlarge sanctuary boundaries. Efforts are already under way by NOAA, for example, to expand the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to include a small section of water in front of the Golden Gate Bridge that was left out of the original Monterey sanctuary designation in 1992.

Although technically, the Obama administration could change its mind after the public hearings, that is highly unlikely. The expanded boundaries are supported by Gov. Jerry Brown and a large number of the state’s congressional representatives. And NOAA has never reversed course after starting a sanctuary expansion and decided not to proceed.
National marine sanctuaries ban oil drilling and other extractive activities. They do not ban fishing or boating, however.

At a White House Christmas party earlier this month, Woolsey discussed expanding sanctuary protections up the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts with Vice President Joe Biden and briefly with the president as he was posing for photos with members of Congress.

Last month, she talked with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the issue when he visited Marin County.

Meanwhile, 12 California House members sent Obama a letter in recent weeks seeking the new preserve. The signatories included Northern California Democrats Jackie Speier, Zoe Lofgren, George Miller, Barbara Lee, John Garamendi, Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo and Sam Farr.

“Unfortunately, the hazards faced by our coast area are real and imminent,” the letter said.
Woolsey has tried to pass bills in Congress since 2004 with the same goal. But her most recent effort, HR192, has been blocked by House Republican leaders who oppose new limits on oil and gas production. And Woolsey is retiring from Congress when the current session ends Jan. 3.

Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/california-fracking_n_2327165.html?utm_hp_ref=san-francisco

Posted: 12/19/2012 5:48 pm EST | Updated: 12/19/2012 8:00 pm EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Just below California’s surface lies enough shale oil to fundamentally transform the state’s entire economy.

And for the first time in the state’s history, California regulators have seriously started to grapple with how the state deals with the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in order to retrieve that oil.

Industry representatives insist the practice — which involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into an oil or natural gas well to stimulate production — is safe, and note that it has been employed in some California wells for decades. But environmentalists worry that fracking could soon become ubiquitous, doing untold damage to the state’s environment in the process.

“These are the first steps in a larger discussion about fracking we’re going to have,” explained Jason Marshall of the California Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources during a conference call Tuesday announcing a new set of rules governing fracking in the state.

California has previously lacked a specific set of guidelines for how to deal with fracking, which has sparked oil and natural gas bonanzas in places Pennsylvania, North Dakota and northeastern Texas. Due to a loophole inserted into the Bush Administration’s 2005 energy bill, a large portion of what happens with fracking — particularly natural gas drilling — is exempted from federal oversight, so the practice is entirely left up to the individual states.

California’s proposed regulations include requirements that all wells using hydraulic fracturing take safety measures to prevent seepage and test machinery regularly. They specify how wastewater is to be stored and discarded and mandate energy companies to regularly monitor old wells after active drilling has ceased.

The rules also require energy companies to publicly release a whole host of information about each well they frack — from the exact location to the makeup of the fluid being injected.

“If these requirements keep someone out of the fracking market because they can’t afford it,” Marshall said, “we’re fine with that.”

Some environmental activists, such as the Center For Biological Diversity’s Kassie Siegel, are less than impressed with the new rules.

Siegel, whose organization is suing both the state of California and the federal government for not doing enough to regulate fracking on public lands leased in an increasingly controversial set of mineral rights auctions, charged that the latest measures don’t ensure environmental safety. “These draft regulations would keep California’s fracking shrouded in secrecy and do little to contain the many threats posed by fracking,” Siegel said in a statement. “[They] are going to have to be completely rewritten if the goal is to provide real protection for our air, water, and communities.”

Siegel argues that the regulations fail to address air pollution and don’t require drilling operations to capture the methane released in the process.

She said that a quarter of all the chemicals used in fracking are known carcinogens, and some people living near fracked wells have reported health ailments like vomiting, nausea and seizures. “We should have baseline testing of air and water quality around fracked wells, but we don’t,” Siegel said.

Conversely, industry backers have pointed to a year-long study conducted in Southern California’s Ingleside Oil Field that found no negative health, air quality or seismic effects from the fracking occurring there. The study, sponsored by an oil company as part of a lawsuit, has been criticized by environmentalists for not looking at the long-term heath effects of fracking and failing to disclose that one of its peer reviewers had close ties to the energy industry.

California has been a major oil producer for over a century and is one of the top five oil-producing states in the nation. But a report issued last year by the U.S. Energy Information Administration released information that could easily kick state production into overdrive.

The research found that the Monterey Shale, a rock formation running underneath much of Central California, contains 15 billion barrels of oil, or some 64 percent of all the recoverable shale oil in the United States. “This shale alone could provide for our domestic oil needs for 50 years,” said Dave Quast of the industry-backed research and public outreach group Energy In Depth.

Despite the area’s enormous oil reserves, the formation’s unique geology has impeded previous efforts to drill. The conditions underground vary widely from one location to another, making it difficult to predict the productivity of any given well based on its neighbors. One well could yield a torrent of oil while the one next door could turn up dry.

As a result, it’s a lot riskier, therefore significantly more expensive, to tap directly into the Monterey Shale than continue to rely on the traditional plays that have long been the backbone of the state’s oil production.

No one yet has been able to find the key to unlocking vast oil wealth hidden inside the Monterey Shale. When they do, however, not only will those techniques likely involve fracking, but the economic and environmental implications have the potential to be enormous.

Environmentalists predict that much drilling would be devastating. “The 15 billion barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale are a carbon bomb,” Siegel said. “If we dig this up and burn it, we’re going to counteract all of California’s pollution reduction efforts.”

On the other hand, California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, something that boosters of increased oil production argue could be largely remedied through more drilling. “North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and that’s largely due to oil and gas development,” said Quast, of Energy In Depth.
Californians themselves are relatively split on fracking, with a recent Public Policy Institute poll showing a roughly even number of Golden State residents falling on either side of the issue.

The poll found opposition to fracking falling along the expected partisan lines, with liberals and urban dwellers in regions like Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area less like to support the practice. However, some residents in California’s rural, agricultural centers — areas like Kern County, where the majority of the state’s oil production takes place — have also voiced concerns.

“We work with a lot of agricultural groups and small farmers, most of whom are shocked to discover that fracking is happening near them,” said Kristen Lynch of Food & Water Watch, a national organization that opposes fracking. A recent report by the Oakland-based group noted that 10 chemicals commonly used in fracking are known to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and some farmers are concerned about these chemicals contaminating the groundwater and affecting their crops.

State regulators said they have yet to see any instances of significant contamination coming from a fracked well.

Some California municipalities, such as Culver City and Los Angeles, have taken steps toward banning the practice entirely.

California State Assemblyman Bob Wiecowski’s (D-Fremont), who reintroduced a bill earlier this month that seeks to clarify the state’s rules on fracking, shrugs off an outright ban as both premature and extreme. “We’re Californians and we like to hate oil companies. There are always going to be people who are looking to shoot Goliath in the eyeball,” he said. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a moratorium before all the information about fracking has been disclosed. You don’t want to be in the dark when you make your decisions, and we’re all in the dark right now.”

Wiecowski emphasized that establishing a clear set of rules and regulations should be the state’s first priority. “It’s important to get all of this squared away now, before companies really figure how to tap into all of the oil in the shale,” he said. “Then we can all fight about Monterey.”

Fracking Photos

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Special thanks to Richard Charter

Ouch! Sharp Lessons From Deepwater Horizon

Fri Dec. 14, 2012 3:18 AM PST

The science journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) has published a Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Special Feature taking a look back 20 months after the explosion that killed eleven people and upended countless lives along the Gulf Coast. Specifically at what happened, what we learned, and what could be done better the next time around. The introduction is authored by Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA, and Marcia McNutt, director of the USGS, among others. They write about the unprecedented scientific and engineering challenges suddenly thrown down in an arena of chaos:*

[S]topping the flow of oil, estimating the amount of oil, capturing and recovering the oil, tracking and forecasting surface oil, protecting coastal and oceanic wildlife and habitat, managing fisheries, and protecting the safety of seafood. Disciplines involved included atmospheric, oceanographic, biogeochemical, ecological, health, biological, and chemical sciences, physics, geology, and mechanical and chemical engineering. Platforms ranged from satellites and planes to ships, buoys, gliders, and remotely operated vehicles to laboratories and computer simulations… Many valuable lessons were learned that should be applied to future events.

High on their wish list:

-The importance of preparedness. The consequences of lack of investment in recent decades in scientific understanding and technological development were brutally obvious during BP’s mess.

-Preparedness means a better basic understanding of the places likely to be affected by a spill at the scale of ‘large marine ecosystems’ such as the the Gulf of Mexico.

-We need to mobilize funding for research fast during a spill, especially early on.

-We need a better way for government to talk to the broadly-dispersed scientific community during a spill.

-We need a new way for scientists to maintain intellectual property of their data so that it will still be considered publishable by journals later on, even as it’s released so the media and public can know what’s going on in as it happens.

Here’s a quick look at the findings of a few of the other papers in the special feature.

Photo: Howard Jelks via Wikimedia Commons. Mashup: Julia Whitty.
This paper begins by noting that the biological consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are unknown especially for plants and animals that live year-round in areas that were oiled. The authors studied killifish-small dwellers of the coastal marshes of the Gulf coast-during the first four months of the spill. They found that fish living in oiled areas showed significant biological changes including genetic changes. The embryos and larval forms of killifish exposed to contaminated waters showed genetic changes of the type that lead to developmental abnormalities, decreased hatching success, and decreased survival. Overall the levels of biological and genetic changes in Gulf killifish in oiled waters were similar to what was seen in fish, sea otters, and harlequin ducks who initially survived the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska but who afterwards suffered population declines.
-Andrew Whitehead, et al. Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes. PNAS 2012. doi:10.1073/pnas.1109545108

Photo: pennstatelive via Flickr. Mashup: Julia Whitty.
This paper assessed the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep-water coral communities of the Gulf of Mexico. The authors examined 11 sites three to four months after the well was capped. They found healthy coral communities at all sites (map here) more than 12 miles / 20 kilometers from the Macondo well. But one site less than 7 miles / 11 kilometers away got walloped. The coral colonies there showed widespread signs of stress including: varying degrees of tissue loss; enlargement of sclerites (small bonelike supports); excess mucous production (think: snot); brittle stars (like the one wrapped around the coral sea fan in the photo above) that were bleached (think: stressed and unhealthy); and corals smothered with brown fluffy material called floc. Forty-three corals colonies were photographed at the contaminated site. About half of those colonies showed signs of stress in more than half the colony. A quarter of those colonies showed signs of stress in >90 percent of the colony. The brittle stars living commensally with the deep-water corals were hard hit too, with 53 percent displaying abnormal colors and/or attachment to the corals. Petroleum biomarkers in the floc bore the signature of oil from Deepwater Horizon. The authors write:
The presence of recently damaged and deceased corals beneath the path of a previously documented plume emanating from the Macondo well provides compelling evidence that the oil impacted deep-water ecosystems. Our findings underscore the unprecedented nature of the spill in terms of its magnitude, release at depth, and impact to deep-water ecosystems.
-Helen K. White, et al. Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep-water coral community in the Gulf of Mexico. PNAS 2012. doi:10.1073/pnas.1118029109

Photo: SkyTruth via Flickr. Mashup: Julia Whitty.
This paper reports on a wide range of gases and aerosols measured from aircraft around, downwind, and away from the Deepwater Horizon site, plus hydrocarbon measurements made from ships in the area. As you might guess air quality issues were different for workers at the site than for people living along the Gulf coast. Four sources of primary air pollutants attributable to the oil spill were detected including: hydrocarbons evaporating from the oil; smoke from deliberate burning of the oil slick; combustion products from the flaring of recovered natural gas; and ship emissions from the recovery and cleanup operations. Secondary organic aerosols that formed over the oil spill were dispersed in a wide plume which continued to increase in mass downwind, likely increasing aerosol particles in coastal communities. Hydrocarbons and ozone were also found downwind of the spill site though confined to narrower plumes.
-Ann M. Middlebrook, et al. Air quality implications of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. PNAS 2012. doi:10.1073/pnas.1110052108

Photo and mashup: Julia Whitty
Other papers in the special issue deal with estimating the flow rate of the well after blowout, plus the decision to cap the well, federal seafood safety response, and a lot more. All the Deepwater Horizon papers in this PNAS issue are open access so you can read without a subscription.
This paper and this one looked at the effects of the microbial communities in reponse to the sudden eruption of oil and gas into the surface and deep waters of the Gulf. The blowout fed a deep sea bacterial bloom that ate hydrocarbons, formed a localized low-oxygen (hypoxic) zone, and altered the microbiology of the region. Blooms of microbes arose in the plumes of oiled and gassed water, plumes which then sometimes cycled on currents back to the spill site now ready populated with microbes ready to eat more erupting oil and gas. This made for an efficient natural compost system. Since crude oil is composed of thousands of different hydrocarbon compounds that biodegrade at different rates in different depths and water temperatures, the erupted plumes were colonized by different species of microbes at different stages, depths, and ages. (Thanks microbes!)
-David L. Valentine, et al. Dynamic autoinoculation and the microbial ecology of a deep water hydrocarbon irruption. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2012 109 (50) 20286-20291 doi:10.1073/pnas.1108820109
-Molly C. Redmond and David L. Valentine. Natural gas and temperature structured a microbial community response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. PNAS 201. doi:10.1073/pnas.1108756108

* Jane Lubchenco, et al. Science in support of the Deepwater Horizon response. PNAS 2012. doi:10.1073/pnas.1204729109

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter
Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Energy policies and not carbon prices will drive the U.S. response to climate change for the foreseeable future, the incoming Senate leader on energy issues said yesterday.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is expected to claim the gavel of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee next month, said in a brief interview that although certain lawmakers support a carbon tax, such a policy has little prospect of becoming law in the near future.

“I think this is a very significant lift right now politically,” Wyden said.

Wyden took part in bipartisan efforts earlier this fall aimed at avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff, a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect Jan. 1 if the White House and Congress do not act. Legislation addressing the crisis was once viewed as a possible opening for a carbon tax.

But while he took a dim view yesterday of chances for a carbon tax, Wyden said the same objective of reducing emissions could be achieved if the next Congress enacts policies that promote low-carbon energy.

“What I’m going to try to do in every practical way I can is to promote bipartisan approaches that advance a low-carbon economy,” he said.

Wyden’s comments echoed those made by Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) at a forum late last month (Greenwire, Nov. 28).
Wyden said some renewables, like biomass and hydropower, had been overlooked by policymakers despite having the potential to generate cleaner power in diverse regions of the country.

“What I’m going to try to do is be very results-oriented,” he said. He added that he was already talking to colleagues about ways to promote low-carbon energy.

While Wyden is expected to chair the energy panel, the death yesterday of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) opened the possibility that he could head the Intelligence Committee in the new Congress instead. But Wyden waved away questions about that possibility yesterday.

“I’m going to let Sen. [Harry] Reid make any announcements with respect to committees,” he said, referring to the Senate majority leader. But he added that he was continuing to lay the groundwork for his chairmanship of the energy panel.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Yes we can! DV

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, December 17, 2012

An environmental group today filed a lawsuit challenging the Interior Department’s five-year offshore oil and gas leasing plan, arguing the agency has failed to accurately analyze the costs and benefits of the plan.

The Center for Sustainable Economy, in a filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and Administrative Procedure Act last summer when it finalized a plan to allow a dozen new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and up to three off the shores of Alaska.

The plan threatens catastrophic spills that could harm Gulf coastlines while failing to maximize revenue from lease sales, said the Santa Fe, N.M.-based group, which is represented in the case by Steven Sugarman and Michael Livermore of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

“Key factors were ignored by BOEM including the massive uncertainty associated with the potential for deepwater drilling disasters, the current glut in gas production, record U.S. fuel exports and the fact that millions of acres of existing leases are idle,” Sugarman said in a statement. “These omissions from BOEM’s economic analysis create an extreme and illegal bias in favor of new leasing.”

Recent lease sales have included 35 tracts in waters deeper than the BP PLC oil spill in April 2010, the group said.

An Interior spokesman today said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
The agency in late June finalized a leasing plan that includes targeted new development off the North Slope of Alaska but forgoes sales in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Interior officials called it a “cautious but forward-looking” solution (E&ENews PM, June 28).

It was followed by the release of the final version of a rule designed to prevent a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 men and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The agency’s drilling safety rule set in stone interim steps companies have largely followed since the Macondo well blowout to enhance well integrity, well control systems and blowout preventers
(Greenwire, Aug. 16).

Special thanks to Richard Charter