Michael Jasny's Blog: Moving Beyond Oil

The Latest MMS Outrage – and Why Salazar’s “Restructuring” Plan Is Insufficient

2010-05-14T17:42:02Z

The Minerals Management Service (or MMS) was born with an inherent conflict of interest. It’s the agency we rely on to regulate offshore oil and gas development and make sure it’s safe for the environment – but it’s also the agency that rakes in the bucks from all of that oil and gas. So when Secretary Salazar announced on Tuesday that he would “restructure” MMS – to put some daylight between the enforcement and business sides – that seemed like a good start. Until some folks noticed that his plan keeps all of the agency’s regulatory and environmental compliance duties with the money counters.

The lack of any concrete step to improve regulation was inexplicable. The Secretary’s announcement came amid a torrent of stories about MMS’ regulatory malfeasance: how the agency handed out categorical exclusions for drilling, parroted industry’s risk estimates, and took up the companies’ cudgel against control measures that would have shaved a micron of profit from their multi-billion-dollar bottom lines.

The latest outrage, reported in today’s New York Times, is that neither MMS nor industry ever bothered to obtain mandatory permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act for their industrialization of the Gulf. Not a single permit for their thousands of wells or their tens of thousands of track-lines of airgun surveys – which significantly impact endangered whales. These permits are important because they require measures that would have lowered the impact from all of these activities.

Here’s what the Times says about MMS’ record just since January 2009:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is responsible for protecting endangered species and marine mammals. It has said on repeated occasions that drilling in the gulf affects these animals, but the minerals agency since January 2009 has approved at least three huge lease sales, 103 seismic blasting projects and 346 drilling plans. Agency records also show that permission for those projects and plans was granted without getting the permits required under federal law.

And that awful record began long before Obama took the helm. Here’s one of the government scientists the Times interviewed, who worked at MMS earlier in the decade:

Another biologist who left the agency in 2005 after more than five years and who now works as an industry consultant said that agency officials went out of their way to accommodate the oil and gas industry.

He said, for example, that seismic activity from drilling can have a devastating effect on mammals and fish, but that agency officials rarely enforced the regulations meant to limit those effects.

Based on my own years of advocacy, I can tell you that MMS never obtained a marine mammal permit for seismic surveys or any other activity in the Gulf, or compelled the oil companies to obtain one. The companies decided they couldn’t be bothered. And why should they since the Marine Mammal Protection Act lacks a so-called “citizen suit” provision, making it impossible for the public to enforce the law against them? MMS let them carry on regardless.

And I can add that MMS hardly did any better with the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires agencies to “look before they leap” by thinking through the environmental consequences of their actions. In 2004, MMS glibly concluded that “no significant impact” would result from all that seismic blasting and refused to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement – even after the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration insisted it was necessary.

Which makes Secretary Salazar’s omission of regulation from Tuesday’s restructuring plan all the more disturbing. By all accounts, MMS is an agency incapable of reforming itself. Understating risk, suppressing science, and cutting corners on permitting are part of an agency culture that has transcended Democratic and Republican administrations. Someone – Secretary Salazar, or President Obama, or Congress – is going to have to get tough, and soon.

Springtime in the Gulf

2010-05-10T17:10:59Z

Ecologically, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill would seem to be on a collision course with spring. Nesting season has just begun for the myriad of migratory birds that return each year to the northern beaches and barrier islands, and the nesting season for sea turtles is rapidly approaching. Small populations of dolphins are calving nearshore, and virtually the entire western Atlantic stock of one of the world’s most prized (and endangered) commercial fish is in the Gulf this month to spawn. It’s hard to imagine a worse time of the year for what’s happening. Here’s a brief field guide.

1. Kemp’s ridley sea turtle

All five of the sea turtle species that inhabit the Gulf – Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, green, and hawksbill – are listed as endangered or threatened under U.S. law. But the endangered species of greatest concern is the Kemp’s ridley, sometimes called the “Gulf’s sea turtle” because it nests only in the western Gulf of Mexico. The entire Kemp’s ridley population is in the Gulf now, ready to spawn, and one of its foraging habitats is right in the middle of the spill. Overflights of the spill area on May 5 showed 30-50 sea turtles (we don’t know which species) in the spill or near it.

2. Bottlenose dolphins

As I wrote last week, bottlenose dolphins are among the Gulf’s most vulnerable marine mammals. The National Marine Fisheries Service has identified more than 30 distinct populations in the northern Gulf, ranging from Texas to Florida, and some consist of little more than a few dozen animals. Many of these tiny groups prefer coastal and inshore waters, the bays and passes and waterways that break up the shoreline – and right now they’re calving, bringing many of them closer in. Give their low abundance and coastal habitat, the spill could devastate some of these dolphin populations if it flows the wrong way.

3. Western Atlantic bluefin tuna

The western Atlantic bluefin tuna is one of the most highly valued commercial fish in the world, which has also made it one of the most endangered commercial fish in the world. It’s been depleted from years of commerce, is considered critically endangered by the IUCN, and, along with its eastern Atlantic counterpart, has been the focus of a thus-far unsuccessful U.S. effort to ban its sale in international trade. Every year, from mid-April to June, the entire population migrates into the Gulf and Florida Straits to spawn, and large numbers could be exposed particularly as the spill heads east to Florida.

4. Sharpnose sharks and friends

The Gulf hosts ten species of sharks considered threatened by the IUCN Red List, the global index of species in peril. Many of these species, like the sharpnose shark, are breeding right now, using the coastal waters of the northern Gulf as their nurseries. The nurseries include seagrass beds off the Chandeleur Islands in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, which now seem practically surrounded by emulsified oil and sheen. Whale sharks, another threatened species, are filter feeders and could be affected by ingested oil.

5. Birds galore

The least tern is an endangered species whose nesting areas on Gulfport beaches will be threatened if oil comes ashore. (Oiling physically alters the feather structure resulting in hypothermia and an inability to properly forage and float.) The brown pelican is a seabird that was removed from the U.S. endangered species list last year despite its low reproductive rate; as my colleague Regan observed last week, its breeding season has just begun, and many pelican pairs are now busy incubating eggs. And numerous songbirds are migrating back to North America from the tropics these days, stopping at the barrier islands to rest and forage. Simply put, we have entered prime migrating and nesting season for Gulf Coast birds.

The spill couldn’t have come at a worse time for wildlife.

Photo credits: NPS Photo, NRDC, NRDC

Dolphins in Oil

2010-05-08T05:57:47Z

Usually I’m jealous of people who get to spend their time on the water, but not these days. Yesterday afternoon a few of my NRDC colleagues who are down in the Gulf to document the growing environmental disaster watched some two dozen bottlenose dolphins swim in the emulsified oil and sheen that’s currently surrounding the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. A few of the animals were calves.

Biologists who have seen bottlenose dolphins blunder through much smaller spills say that the species isn’t particularly adept at avoiding oil sheens and other messes, leaving the animals at risk of serious exposure. That would seem to be the case here. There was nothing clearly unusual about their behavior yesterday – except for their presence in the oil itself, which my colleagues said was potent enough to make the humans on the boat feel woozy.

Closer to the water, the fumes were likely to be worse. Some toxins found in crude oil evaporate quickly in warm temperatures and then remain in a heavy layer just above the surface. That’s bad news for dolphins and other species that have to breathe there. Hundreds of harbor seals and possibly killer whales died simply from inhaling toxic fumes during the Exxon Valdez spill, and some marine mammals are particularly prone to ingesting or inhaling oil directly. My colleague Jessica reports that a few of yesterday’s dolphins emitted a low-pitched gasping noise, which is odd and worrisome.

Bottlenose dolphins are at particular risk from this spill. The National Marine Fisheries Service has identified more than 30 individual populations in the northern Gulf, some consisting of little more than a few dozen animals. Many of these small groups prefer coastal and inshore waters, like the sounds and bays that break up the rich Louisiana shoreline – and right now they’re calving, bringing many of the dolphins closer in. Given their small size and small range, it’s possible that much of the population my colleagues saw is currently swimming in oil.

As a friend of mine says, whales and dolphins do very well at hiding the fact that they’re dying. I have no idea what’s happening to that pod of dolphins off the Breton refuge, but breathing the fumes above that toxic soup can’t possibly be good for them.

Photos taken May 5, 2010 by NRDC

Whales and Oil

2008-06-19T19:00:34Z

As offshore oil gets dragged once again onto the political scene, it’s worth remembering the environmental costs that led to the adoption of an offshore moratorium in the first place.

One of the seminal events in the modern environmental movement was the 1969 blow-out of Union Oil Platform A, which sent millions of gallons of crude into the Santa Barbara Channel and tarred beaches for miles along the California coast. The Santa Barbara spill became an object lesson for the hazards of offshore drilling, a lesson that has since been relearned in the Gulf of Mexico, the Black Sea, and many other locales here and abroad. But even aside from the occasional headline-gathering calamity, the search for oil at sea remains an environmentally risky business, and not only for its direct effects on humans.

Two weeks ago, for example, some 200 melon-headed whales stranded in the shallow waters of Loza Bay on the northwest side of Madagascar. ExxonMobil had been conducting an oil-and-gas survey nearby, using sonar a few days prior to the strandings to map the seafloor and later booting up powerful airguns to look for deposits below.

Melon-headed whales are deep-water animals that very seldom strand but seem acutely sensitive to man-made noise. A huge pod of melon-heads came into Hanalei Bay, on Kauai, in July 2004 as the U.S. Navy ran a major sonar exercise offshore. In that case residents managed after a day of struggle to lead the whales back out to sea, but the news from Madagascar is grim by comparison, with more and more animals reported dead. ExxonMobil suspended its operations, and an investigation into the strandings has begun.

Biologists who’ve looked at the problem of oil-and-gas exploration are concerned less about mass strandings than about subtler, more far-reaching effects on marine mammals: things like habitat abandonment and interference with breeding and foraging, which are not so easily observed but are probably occurring on a population scale. The die-offs in Loza Bay are just a reminder of what offshore oil means for the creatures who live offshore.