http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2010/04/eastern_gulf_of_mexico_is_cons.html
New Orleans Times-Picayune  By Kimberly Quillen, The Times-Picayune
April 18, 2010, 6:20AM 
Of the new territories that President Barack Obama proposes opening to offshore drilling, the eastern Gulf of Mexico is the best understood and promises to be the most fertile, the director of the Minerals Management Service said in New Orleans this week. It’s also a territory that, if opened up to energy exploration, could make an indelible mark on the south Louisiana economy.
“We know more about it than the other frontier (areas),” said Liz Birnbaum, who was in the area for a meeting of offshore inspectors hosted by the MMS, the federal agency charged with overseeing energy exploration. “The eastern Gulf is certainly the most reliable.”

Obama proposed late last month opening up territories along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling. The proposal, which drew criticism from environmental groups, aims to reduce dependence on foreign oil and curry political support for a climate change bill.

For years, offshore oil and gas development has taken place in the central and western areas of the Gulf of Mexico. But energy development in the eastern part of the Gulf has been off limits because of long-standing opposition from Florida, where politicians and environmentalists have worried about the impact of offshore development.

Obama’s proposal would limit drilling in the eastern Gulf to projects taking place at least 125 miles off the coast of Florida and would be allowed only if Congress agrees to drop a moratorium that now blocks drilling in that area until 2022.

Even with the 125-mile limit, the proposal would open up two-thirds of the oil and gas resources in the eastern Gulf, where an estimated 3 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and as much as 12 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas lay, according to the MMS.

But since the eastern Gulf has long been off limits to energy exploration, it remains unclear exactly how energy-rich the area is.

“Much of the information (we have) is based on work done before the moratorium that was closer to shore,” said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute. “We simply didn’t have the same tools (then) that we do now.”

Still, exploratory wells and seismic data on the eastern Gulf is more recent than data collected on the other new territories the Obama proposal would open up.

Because of the 125-mile limit, exploration in the eastern Gulf would take place primarily in deeper waters.

And south Louisiana is positioned to emerge as a base for serving eastern Gulf energy projects, a role it already serves for the central and western Gulf. Many of the supply vessels that support offshore platforms operate out of Port Fourchon, a sea port located on the southern tip of Lafourche Parish.

“It’s quite likely that (service for eastern Gulf projects) will come out of here,” said Birnbaum, noting that south Louisiana already has the infrastructure for bring oil and gas mined from the Gulf onshore.

“It would stand to reason that most of it would come out of Louisiana and Texas. That’s where the major service companies are located,” said Larry Wall, spokesman for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, a group that represents the state’s energy industry. “It’s a crack in the door, but it’s definitely too soon to estimate any sort of financial impact.”
Smith said Mobile, Ala., also has offshore service capabilities that could serve the eastern Gulf.

Opening up of the eastern Gulf to energy exploration, assuming the moratorium is indeed lifted, could also renew interest in drilling in the Gulf as a whole, which has been perceived by some in recent years as an aging reservoir with its best days behind it.
“The idea that the Gulf of Mexico is tapped out is not consistent with our understanding,” Birnbaum said. “It’s a mature area. Some platforms have been abandoned. But as we move farther out, the companies are finding even more resources. The eastern Gulf is going to be another area for them to look at.”

 Kimberly Quillen can be reached at kquillen@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3416.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/18/2685021/the-conversation-is-it-time-to.html
Sacramento Bee
Opinion – California Forum – The Conversation
Sunday, April 18, 2010

A 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara caused 200,000 gallons of crude oil to spread over 800 square miles of ocean and shore.  VERNON MERRITT III / Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The Conversation: Is it time to get beyond the Santa Barbara oil spill? No
Shorelines need protection from the ‘Drill, baby, drill’ ethos
By Richard Charter
Special to The Bee
Published: Sunday, Apr. 18, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 1E
When President Barack Obama announced plans to open broad swaths of America’s waters to oil and gas drilling late last month, the Pacific Coast from California to Washington was left protected – for now. This was not a foregone conclusion, considering that some areas off California were proposed for new drilling just in the past few years. But it was the right decision for the Pacific Ocean.

America’s systems of national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, such as the national seashores and parklands that now embrace many of California’s beloved beaches and estuaries, are based on the principle that some places are best safeguarded for future generations. That means protecting them from damaging industrial development such as offshore oil drilling.

Since 1981, most of California’s coastal elected officials have backed a bipartisan congressional moratorium that set aside fragile coastal waters, and protected important fisheries and coastal-dependent economies from the effects of offshore drilling. But on Oct. 1, 2008, President George W. Bush, bowing to well-funded lobbying pressure from the oil industry and then Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s orchestrated chants of “Drill Baby Drill,” abandoned the offshore drilling moratorium supported by three consecutive presidents, and pushed Congress to do the same.

When Obama took office, he inherited a fast-track Bush drilling plan proposing three separate offshore lease sales extending up and down the length of the California coast. Areas from Arena Basin off of Mendocino County to the beaches of La Jolla and San Diego were to be offered up for drilling. So when Obama announced his decision March 31 to open up coastal drilling elsewhere around the country, the entire California shoreline and its $43 billion coastal economy breathed a sigh of relief. It had won a long-sought – though perhaps temporary – political reprieve from new federal offshore drilling leases until at least 2017.

But other areas were not so lucky. On the Atlantic Coast, tens of millions of acres of seabed starting only three miles off the shoreline, from Delaware down to Georgia, could now be opened to drilling. And on the white sand beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast and Panhandle, the administration proposes to undermine a carefully negotiated 2006 bipartisan compromise to set aside a portion of the eastern Gulf of Mexico until at least 2022, to protect fisheries, critical military assets and environmentally sensitive coastal areas.

And last but not least, the administration has allowed drilling to proceed in the remote and fragile waters of America’s Arctic Ocean, where global climate change is already wreaking obvious environmental havoc, and where no effective cleanup technology has been invented to handle an oil spill amid the broken sea ice. Yet Shell has just been given the green light to start drilling there this summer.

Offshore drilling accidents and related oil spills happen with alarming frequency throughout the world, despite modern, “safe” drilling technology. Last fall, an out-of-control blowout from a “modern” offshore platform oiled more than 8,000 square miles of Australia’s lush Timor Sea for 10 weeks. And this month, at least 18,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a broken pipeline extending from an oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico through the Delta National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana. So far, about 160 square miles have been oiled by the spill, including 40 square miles of protected marshes.

Here in California, we can enjoy Obama’s drilling reprieve until at least 2017, but we must be aware that the oil lobby still has its eye on our coast. In fact, the oil companies have already refocused their efforts on Sacramento and Santa Barbara. Three small local citizen groups in Santa Barbara County have recently admitted that they are working with the oil lobby to help facilitate the first new offshore leasing in 40 years within California’s near-shore state waters.
A drilling plan by Plains Exploration & Production Co. includes a proposal to “slant-drill” from an existing federal drilling rig back toward shore and underneath our protected state waters.
The dangerous precedent set by allowing at least 14 new wells to be punched into protected waters would gravely undermine four decades of bipartisan statewide protection provided by the California State Tidelands Oil and Gas Sanctuary. This state sanctuary, sheltering our waters between the Mexican and Oregon borders, is now the only legal protection our state retains from new drilling.

Fortunately, California’s State Lands Commission has already wisely rejected the proffered Plains Exploration deal. An attempt to circumvent the authority of the State Lands Commission also collapsed in the California Legislature. We cannot fall for an oil company’s flawed and flimsy assurances that drillers will eventually retreat from their profitable project and voluntarily remove portions of their spill-plagued infrastructure. To lose our coast in this way would be tragic after decades of hard work by elected officials and grass-roots activists from Santa Monica to Mendocino to Washington, D.C.

The obvious take-home message: When you win big, as the California coast has now done, it is time to stop gambling and leave the casino.
Richard Charter is a senior policy adviser for marine programs for Defenders of Wildlife. He has been working on offshore drilling issues with local and state elected officials and the conservation community more than 30 years.

By KEVIN WADLOW   kwadlow@keynoter.com

Posted – Saturday, April 17, 2010 06:00 AM EDT

A new oil-drilling report commissioned for the Florida House of Representatives describes the risk for oil operations in state waters as “serious but manageable.” The 177-page report, written by consultants for Willis Structured Risk Solutions of London, was released April 9.

On Friday, a House energy-policy committee was expected to introduce a bill that would allow oil exploration and drilling in state waters.

“Risk of damage to natural and human habitats from hurricanes alone dwarfs the [oil-drilling] risks we have uncovered,” says the Willis report. It acknowledges the Florida Keys reef stands out as an area of particular environmental sensitivity.

“As one moves [south] along Florida’s Gulf Coast … the coastline and nearshore areas become increasingly sensitive to prospective oil and gas activities,” says the report.

Reef Relief policy advisor Paul Johnson praised technical aspects of the Willis report, but said it does not go far enough to highlight the risk to Keys and South Florida waters.

“Even if the risk is low, it’s inappropriate to go anywhere in South Florida,” Johnson said. “The environmental and social consequences of a spill are so enormous that South Florida [drilling] should be off the table until the risk is zero.”

Other drilling opponents in South Florida were unmoved by the report.

“One spill can end it all,” said Jonathan Ullman, an Everglades specialist for the Sierra Club in Miami.

Ullman pointed to a months-long major oil spill from a drilling platform in Australia’s Timor Sea that caused “devastating effects” to the marine environment there.

“If you put the submerged state lands on the market to the high bidder, an oil spill is not a matter of if but when,” Ullman said.

Johnson said from Tallahassee that even if the House bill is introduced, it appears unlikely that a companion bill will be passed by the Florida Senate.

A Senate bill on oil drilling has made little headway since being introduced March 11. The legislative session ends April 30.

“There’s not enough time and not enough interest on the Senate side for anything to go through this year,” Johnson said.

But in 2011, drilling advocates will take leadership positions in both the Senate and house, he said.

An April 6 spill from a crude-oil pipeline off Louisiana should serve as a warning, say Florida conservationists. The U.S. Coast Guard said the estimated 18,000 gallons of crude oil affected “an area of approximately 160 square miles,” including portions of the Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

“Introducing a bill to allow oil drilling in our nearshore waters in the midst of Louisiana’s ongoing oil spill cleanup is a twisted bit of irony,” said Mark Ferrulo, executive director of Progress Florida.

Several Monroe County groups — including the Key West City Commission, the Key West Chamber of Commerce and the Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council — have passed resolutions calling for continued bans on Gulf drilling.

“Despite advances in oil-drilling technology, there is no positive assurance that catastrophic damage to our coastline, beaches, plants and fish could be avoided during normal operating conditions or during storm situations,” says a Key West city resolution from November.

A federal plan unveiled March 31 proposes to open areas of the Gulf of Mexico that had been closed to oil exploration for decades.

Although President Obama and other officials said the areas lie at least 125 miles off Florida’s coast, they later acknowledged the draft zones come much closer to Dry Tortugas National Park and the Tortugas Ecological Reserves of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

www.oceana.org

Thanks to everyone who signed on!   Matt Niemerski, Ocean Advocate

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/house-will-wait-till-next-year-to-push-574191.html

Palm Beach Post:  House will wait till next year to push offshore drilling plan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated: 6:17 p.m. Friday, April 16, 2010
Posted: 5:24 p.m. Friday, April 16, 2010
TALLAHASSEE – The House sponsor of legislation that would lift a ban on offshore drilling in Florida’s state waters said Friday he was dropping the effort for this year but would try again in 2011.

Rep. Dean Cannon made the announcement as a committee he chairs began reviewing a draft that had yet to be filed with just two weeks left in the 60-day legislative session.
It would have allowed drilling rigs as close as three miles from shore on a temporary basis. Permanent rigs or platforms would have had to stay at least six miles away.

“It is not the right time to vote on this issue,” said the Winter Park Republican. “I haven’t seen any evidence that would suggest that our counterparts in the Senate have an appetite for this issue this year.”

Instead, he plans to use the draft as a starting point next year when he’ll preside over the House as speaker if Republicans retain their majority as expected.

He’ll also have a powerful partner. Sen. Mike Haridopolos, an Indialantic Republican who has been leading the push for offshore oil and natural gas drilling in the other chamber, has been designated as Senate president for 2011-12.

Cannon’s draft bill would allow drilling in state waters that extend about 10 miles into the Gulf of Mexico and some three miles into the Atlantic Ocean.

It would not affect federal waters farther from shore. President Barack Obama recently announced plans to lift drilling barriers there. He wants to open up the Atlantic from Delaware to central Florida and plans to ask Congress to repeal a ban on drilling in the gulf within 125 miles of Florida’s beaches.

Cannon sponsored a similar bill that passed in the House late in last year’s session. Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, was cool to the idea and it was not taken up in the Senate.

Proponents said drilling can be done safely to help reduce dependence on foreign oil while providing the state with a new source of revenue.

Opponents said it still wasn’t worth the risk to Florida’s environment and tourism industry nor would it provide the state with a significant boost to either its economy or treasury.

Thanks to Richard Charter as ever!