House panel to explore seismic data in Atlantic

By Phil Taylor, E&E News
January 6, 2014

A House panel Friday will explore advancements in oil and gas surveying technology and its role in the future of offshore energy development in the Atlantic Ocean.

The timing of the Natural Resources Committee oversight hearing is no coincidence, as it comes months before the Interior Department is expected to finalize a sweeping plan to allow seismic testing along the East Coast from Delaware to Florida.

Members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources expect to hear from an official from a global offshore surveying firm as well as a member of President Obama's former BP PLC oil spill commission.

Republican lawmakers and industry officials have lobbied hard for the Obama administration to finalize its programmatic environmental impact statement to allow seismic surveys in the mid- and south Atlantic, where oil and gas resource estimates are roughly three decades old.

Updated seismic data would give companies and the federal government a better idea of where oil and gas might be located and will help guide future federal leasing decisions, Obama officials have said.

"There have been huge technological advancements made over the decades since the last seismic surveys were conducted in the Atlantic," said a statement last week from the National Ocean Industries Association.

NOIA said Spectrum ASA will be testifying on behalf of the geological and geophysical industry.

While the mid- and south Atlantic are believed to contain nearly 2 billion barrels of oil, those government estimates are based on surveying that took place decades ago. The Gulf of Mexico is believed to contain 25 times that amount.

Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has received about a dozen applications for seismic work from several companies since a moratorium on drilling in the Atlantic was lifted in 2008.

But drilling proponents warn that few surveying companies will be willing to spend upward of $100 million to conduct seismic tests if industry is not guaranteed an opportunity to eventually lease and drill the Atlantic.

BOEM is currently weighing whether to open the Atlantic to leasing in its next five-year plan, which begins in 2017.

A recent study commissioned by NOIA and the American Petroleum Institute last month found that allowing drilling off the East Coast could yield significant new domestic energy production, create more than a quarter of a million jobs, generate more than $50 billion in government revenues and add $23.5 billion to the U.S. economy (EnergyWire, Dec. 6, 2013).

Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers have strongly opposed seismic exploration, arguing that the activities are harmful to marine wildlife and are a gateway to full-scale drilling and production.

The surveys, which involve loud blasts from air guns towed behind ships for day, weeks or months at a time, are believed to impair hearing in whales and an array of other marine life.

"For creatures that depend on their sense of sound to survive, this is a severe threat," said a statement last month from Margaret Cooney, campaigns officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "Unbridled noise pollution is drowning out the calls of whales and other marine mammals with life-threatening consequences for finding food, mating, nurturing young, navigating and communicating."

Senior committee Democrats, including Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, have also lobbied Obama to stop the seismic plan. He has called it "the first step to offshore drilling, and we have to put a stop to it before we experience a Deepwater Horizon-like disaster in the Atlantic."

Democrats have invited Donald Boesch, a former member of Obama's National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, to testify Friday.

BOEM is contemplating a suite of mitigation measures for marine wildlife in its programmatic environmental impact statement, including time and area closures, requiring wildlife observers and acoustic monitoring to reduce impacts to whales and establishing buffer zones between seismic tests (Greenwire, Aug. 9, 2012).

Schedule: The hearing is Friday, Jan. 10, at 9:30 a.m. in 1324 Longworth.

Witnesses: Donald Boesch, former member of the presidential oil spill commission; an official from Spectrum Geo Inc.; others TBA.