OFFSHORE DRILLING: 
Noise at issue as enviros open new front in drilling battle

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

On the one-year anniversary of the BP PLC oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, environmentalists are redoubling their efforts to stop what they say is an overlooked threat to marine animals: noise.

A coalition of groups said it plans to file a lawsuit to halt the government's approval of the first 10 seismic exploration projects since a deepwater drilling moratorium was lifted last October. The seismic projects emit powerful blasts that harm fish and marine mammals, including endangered whales, the groups say.

The groups' February notice of intent to sue represents an ever-broadening legal front that companies face as they resume oil and gas drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf. A separate lawsuit filed last June seeks to force the Interior Department to scrap a 2004 programmatic environmental review that guides how the agency approves seismic projects.

The oil industry warns that if environmental groups prevail, it could mean the loss of jobs, oil and gas production and critical knowledge of where to drill next to satisfy the nation's energy needs.

"Seismic activity is the baseline from which all other offshore activity operates," said Michael Kearns, director of external affairs for the National Ocean Industries Association. "If you were to shut down seismic, you'd be shutting down the whole pipeline of activity."

Before they sink a drill bit into the sea floor, energy companies depend on detailed seismic reports to guide them to the most promising pockets of oil or gas.

The seismic data is gathered by emitting powerful blasts of up to 250 decibels from surface ships to reveal the shapes and densities of sub-sea formations.

But the blasts -- which replaced an earlier technology, dynamite, in the 1950s -- are nearly loud enough to cause hearing loss in marine mammals and can disturb critical behaviors such as feeding and breeding, groups warn. The blasts can also mask communications between individual whales and dolphins.

Industry disputes the groups' allegations but concedes more research is needed.

"The fact that dynamite was the method of choice that seismic replaced gives you some sense of how powerful these arrays are," said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of four groups suing Interior. The other groups are the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and Gulf Restoration Network.

'Lawless zone'

Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement is permitting seismic activity that violates environmental laws that prohibit projects from harming marine mammals or endangered species, groups claim.

For example, the agency has failed to obtain authorizations from the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, for each marine mammal a seismic project is expected to disturb, as required under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the groups contend.

The decommissioning of oil and gas platforms, which use actual explosives, is the only activity that currently obtains marine mammal authorizations, Jasny said. Interior has done a better job accounting for impacts to marine mammals in the Arctic, the groups say.

BOEMRE has also failed to update interagency consultations required under the Endangered Species Act to account for new information on the impacts from a spill, including the oil and gas industry's inability to contain and clean up the oil.

"The Gulf has been a lawless zone when it comes to the oil industry," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which has filed a handful of separate lawsuits challenging Interior's decisions after the BP spill. The agency "turned a blind eye to its environmental laws that also required permits before seismic surveys can take place."

Her concern was echoed in a report released last December by Interior's inspector general that suggests the agency suppressed findings of significant impacts from seismic activities to facilitate development.

"In one case, a scientist reported that he found significant impacts on Gulf of Mexico marine mammals from proposed seismic explorations," the 88-page report said. "According to this scientist, although a National Marine Fisheries Service [environmental impact statement] supported his findings, BOEMRE hired an outside consulting company to 'massage' his reported impacts to get them below the statutory threshold."

In their lawsuit, environmental groups warn that seismic impacts would further harm Gulf species already coping with the effects of the BP spill.

"The same wildlife populations contending with the long-term consequences of the Gulf spill will also have to contend with the industry's seismic surveys," their complaint reads. "The Gulf's small population of sperm whales, which has already suffered a substantial loss of its nursing habitat in the Mississippi Canyon and is likely to consume oil-contaminated prey over the long term, must persist amid regular booming from the industry surveys, which appear to impair their ability to feed."

The federal government has not filed its response in the case. The two sides are set to meet today as part of ongoing settlement talks, Sakashita said.

Mitigation, consultation

BOEMRE Director Michael Bromwich this week said his agency is doing "significantly more" to analyze the impacts of oil and gas activities since the BP spill.

"We're doing site-specific environmental assessments for exploration plans in deep water, which we hadn't done before and that involves levels of analysis including what some of the archaeological issues are with respect to proposals to drill," he said.

Bromwich added that the agency is continuing its review of how it uses the National Environmental Policy Act in approving exploration plans and drilling permits and will continue to look at other steps to mitigate or prevent environmental impacts.

The agency is in the final stages of completing a memorandum of understanding with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help guide consultations after the restructuring of the former Minerals Management Service, Bromwich said.

"At the same time, we are enhancing our consultations with those other agencies," Bromwich said. "What specific additional steps or requirements those will mean in the future, too early to tell. But we're engaged with all of them."

In the meantime, seismic firms have included mitigation steps such as gradually ramping up blast volumes and hiring visual observers to watch for the presence of marine mammals, said Kearns, of NOIA.

Moreover, seismic exploration helps limit the amount of wells that need to be drilled in the first place, reducing both the cost and environmental risks of offshore development, said Chip Gill, president of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, a trade group that includes more than 115 members.

"If you're going to incur the environmental footprint of drilling, one should want to have the greatest chance of success," Gill said.

Seismic data also helps identify early hazards in the drilling process such as over-pressured gas pockets or hydrates that threaten the safety of an operation, he said.

While unanswered questions remain about the technology's impact, current science does not support the legal claims of environmental groups, IAGC and NOIA have said.

"There may be a lot of assertions about impacts that are unclear," Kearns said. "We're a ready and willing partner with the government in making sure the environmental impacts are as minimal as possible."

Protecting marine mammals

Environmental groups say the Marine Mammal Protection Act is important because so little is known about how human activities affect ocean species.

"We know perilously little about their ecology and population size, as Congress made clear in enacting the legislation," NRDC's Jasny said. "Congress intended to build precaution into the act."

A group of 16 scientists in an October 2009 letter urged President Obama to place a cap on ambient noise in U.S. coastal waters as part of his National Oceans Policy and set a timeline for achieving substantial reductions by 2020.

The scientists warned that background noise at low frequencies vital to many marine species has increased 100-fold in some locations over the past half-century, threatening the survival of whales, dolphins and fish.

Meanwhile, Interior in December announced it is preparing a programmatic environmental impact statement to support seismic exploration of the mid- and south-Atlantic that it said will comply with laws protecting endangered species and marine mammals as well as the National Historic Preservation Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Industry groups have complained the effort will garner limited interest in seismic exploration because Interior has said there will be no oil and gas lease sales in the Atlantic until at least 2017.

Environmental groups say the Atlantic and Arctic oceans are new battlegrounds for oil and gas development.

"The Gulf of Mexico is getting the brunt of it right now, but the problem is on the cusp in the Arctic and the Atlantic, where there are critical concerns with the [federally endangered] right whales," Jasny said.

Back to Top