Bummer–just what we need—more fracking, more water quality pollution, more fossil fuel extraction, instead of clean energy that will insure a healthy future for ourselves and the planet. dv

June 26, 2012, 11:08 AMComment

By JOHN M. BRODER
The Obama administration, moving swiftly on the president’s promise to expedite the southernmost portion of the disputed Keystone XL pipeline, has granted construction permits for part of the route passing through Texas, officials said on Tuesday.

The Army Corps of Engineers on Monday told TransCanada, which wants to build a 1,700-mile pipeline to carry heavy crude from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, that it could begin construction on the portion of the proposed pipeline that would end at the gulf port of Nederland, Tex. The Corps of Engineers is still reviewing permits for a section of the pipeline beginning at a major oil depot in Cushing, Okla., and linking up with the final leg ending at the gulf.

In January, President Obama denied TransCanada permission to build the northern part of the pipeline from Canada to Oklahoma, saying Congress had not given him sufficient time to review the environmental impact. But at a political appearance in March in Oklahoma, he announced he was taking steps to speed approval of the portion of the project running from Cushing to the gulf to relieve a bottleneck in oil supplies at the Oklahoma oil terminal.

The president also invited the company to resubmit its application for the rest of the pipeline. The company did so in early May.

Environmental advocates and some local landowner groups strongly opposed the pipeline, citing the dangers of possible spills and saying that the oil it would carry, extracted from tar sands formations in northern Canada, was a major contributor to greenhouse gas pollution.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/06/environmental_groups_file_suit.html

Nola.com
Published: Monday, June 18, 2012, 5:45 PM Updated: Monday, June 18, 2012, 5:45 PM
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

Four national environmental groups filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Monday, challenging the Wednesday sale of offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The lawsuit contends that the federal agency has not fully addressed the risks to wildlife and the environment from oil spills in the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.

The suit says BOEM officials violated the federal National Environmental Policy Act by not determining the effects of the Deepwater Horizion spill on wildlife and then using that information to rewrite an environmental impact statement supporting Wednesday’s Central Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 216/222, and instead relied on incomplete information gathered for an environmental statement before the spill.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed the suit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity.

“The government is gambling with the Gulf by encouraging even more offshore drilling in the same exceedingly deep waters that have already proven to be treacherous, rather than investing in safer clean energy that creates jobs without risking lives and livelihoods,” said Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for North America at Oceana. “This move sets us up for another disastrous oil spill, threatening more human lives, livelihoods, industries and marine life, including endangered species, in the greedy rush to expand offshore drilling.”

A spokesman for BOEM said the agency does not comment on pending lawsuits.

The four environmental groups filed a similar lawsuit in January 2011, challenging the first lease sale after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That suit failed to halt the December 2011 Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 218, which resulted in high bids totaling $338 million on 191 tracts.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/study_bp_gulf_of_mexico_oil_sp.html

Published: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 9:31 AM
By Stan Freeman

NORTHAMPTON – Oil residue from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be causing potentially lethal defects in fish, according to a Smith College biologist.

“This oil is not gone yet. This disaster is not over. There are embryos right now that are still getting exposed to that oil,” said Michael J.F. Barresi, who, along with students at Smith College and the University of Massachusetts, conducted a study of the effects of oil residue of the type and in the concentrations that existed in the Gulf after the spill.

An article about the study and their findings appeared in a recent issue of BMC Biology, an online journal. Barresi was the lead investigator.

In April 2010, following an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, an oil drilling rig, more than 200 million gallons of oil was released into the Gulf of Mexico. The largest oil spill in U.S. history, it contaminated nearly 650 miles of coastline.

Barresi and a team of students, including post-doctoral fellows, replicated conditions in the gulf in a controlled lab setting to test young fish for the effects of high concentrations of oil in the water.

They exposed zebrafish, a common freshwater fish often found in aquariums, to concentrations of oil in seawater that existed during the first year after the spill. Zebrafish are considered a good model for looking at the effect on embryonic development at the cellular and molecular level in fish.

Barresi said the researchers found that virtually all the fish embryos and larvae that were exposed were affected as they grew, most often dying or losing the critical reflexes that allowed them to escape predators, thus making them easy prey.

“I suspect that there will be an effect and that there has been an effect. In terms of the gravity of the effect, the only way that we will know is through long-term studies that will last over the next 20 years, of surveys (of aquatic populations),” he said. Barresi said his team’s study may be the first to assess specifically the impact of the oil contamination in the Gulf of Mexico on fish populations there.

Already, those studying general effects in the Gulf have observed an unusual spike in dolphin deaths, including stillborn dolphins in that region, he said. “Those stillborn dolphins are closest thing that we have (to embryos). I’d be very interested in knowing if any of those dolphins have any of those defects” that his study observed, Barresi said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

via PLoS ONE Alerts: Ecology by Holly M. Bik et al. on 6/6/12

by Holly M. Bik, Kenneth M. Halanych, Jyotsna Sharma, W. Kelley Thomas
Benthic habitats harbour a significant (yet unexplored) diversity of microscopic eukaryote taxa, including metazoan phyla, protists, algae and fungi. These groups are thought to underpin ecosystem functioning across diverse marine environments. Coastal marine habitats in the Gulf of Mexico experienced visible, heavy impacts following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, yet our scant knowledge of prior eukaryotic biodiversity has precluded a thorough assessment of this disturbance. Using a marker gene and morphological approach, we present an intensive evaluation of microbial eukaryote communities prior to and following oiling around heavily impacted shorelines. Our results show significant changes in community structure, with pre-spill assemblages of diverse Metazoa giving way to dominant fungal communities in post-spill sediments. Post-spill fungal taxa exhibit low richness and are characterized by an abundance of known hydrocarbon-degrading genera, compared to prior communities that contained smaller and more diverse fungal assemblages. Comparative taxonomic data from nematodes further suggests drastic impacts; while pre-spill samples exhibit high richness and evenness of genera, post-spill communities contain mainly predatory and scavenger taxa alongside an abundance of juveniles. Based on this community analysis, our data suggest considerable (hidden) initial impacts across Gulf beaches may be ongoing, despite the disappearance of visible surface oil in the region.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/arctic-oil-drilling-greenpeace-plans-monitor-shell-oil-submarines

Katie Medred | Jun 06, 2012

The notorious environmental group will be keeping a close eye on Shell this summer. Greenpeace plans to launch a “Save the Arctic” tour from Seattle in the coming weeks.
The tour is fronted by the group’s signature vessel the Esperanza. The former Russian issued ice class ship is complete with a warm rainbow paint job and a well meaning crew.

Greenpeace plans to take the Esperanza up the Pacific Coast to Shell’s proposed well sites in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Once in Alaskan waters, Esperanza and her crew plan to camp out and watch the modern “Arctic oil rush” unfold.

Included in the observation project are an undisclosed number of submarines. The group plans to use the craft(s) to monitor and document underwater occurrences during Shell’s off coast exploration.

A Greenpeace representative told Washington State’s Kitsap Sun:
“The crews will be using submarines to document the steep floor and the marine life along with various attributes of the Chukchi Sea. That will be part of a couple-month-long expedition we’re undertaking to document the potential impacts of an oil spill in the Arctic and what Shell is doing up there.”

Despite the “Save the Arctic” tour’s pertinacious attitude the Alaska U.S. District Court has imposed a restriction on how close the group, its ship or sister subs can come to any Shell owned or operated unit.

Special thanks to Richard Charter