The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published final incidental take regulations that authorize the nonlethal, incidental, unintentional take of small numbers of Pacific walruses and polar bears during oil and gas industry activities in the Beaufort Sea and adjacent northern coast of Alaska. Industry operations include similar types of activities covered by the previous 5-year Beaufort Sea ITRs effective from August 3, 2011, through August 3, 2016. This rule is also effective for 5 years from the date of issuance. FWS states that it is issuing these rules pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Research (OAR) has published a notice on behalf of the NOAA Scientific Integrity Office that announces the availability of the draft Procedural Handbook to accompany NOAA Administrative Order 202–735D, the scientific integrity policy, for public comment. The draft procedural handbook provides revised NOAA procedures to respond to allegations of scientific and research misconduct. Comments on the draft Procedural Handbook must be received by August 29, 2016. The draft Procedural Handbook is available on the NOAA Scientific Integrity Commons Web site at: http://nrc.noaa.gov/ScientificIntegrityCommons
Click here to read NOAA’s Federal Register notice of this action. The notice contains links and more detail.
The International Association of Geophysical Contractors has published the follow press release on the Department of Interiors’ recently published arctic drilling rules:
“Last week the Obama administration released yet another regulation intended to undermine the viability of the offshore oil and gas industry in the United States. On July 7, the Department of Interior announced its new rules for drilling offshore in Alaska. For the first time ever, the administration decided to create special rules for Alaska, more onerous than the rules that apply to offshore production in the rest of the country. No accidents or incidents have occurred to warrant these new aggressive rules, but then for a regulator when it comes to regulation, there never seems to be a need to ask why.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has published its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Cook Inlet Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Lease Sale 244. After the public hearings and written comments on the Draft EIS have been reviewed and considered, a Final EIS will be prepared.
The proposed action addressed in this Draft EIS is to conduct an oil and gas lease sale on portions of the Cook Inlet Outer Continental Shelf Planning Area. Lease Sale 244 would provide qualified bidders the opportunity to bid on OCS blocks in Cook Inlet to gain conditional rights to explore, develop, and produce oil and natural gas.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has published its Record of Decision for proposed oil and gas WPA Lease Sale 248. This Record of Decision identifies the Bureau’s selected alternative for proposed WPA Lease Sale 248, which is analyzed in the Gulf of Mexico OCS Oil and Gas Lease Sale: 2016; Western Planning Area Lease Sale 248 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (WPA 248 Supplemental EIS). BOEM has selected the proposed action, which is identified as BOEM’s preferred alternative (Alternative A) in the WPA 248 Supplemental EIS.
The Record of Decision and associated information are available on the agency’s Website below.
Editor’s Note: Subsequent to the publication of the following post CRE received a letter from a representative of the Secretary of Commerce in which the author described the ongoing review of issues raised by CRE. CRE looks forward to the aforementioned analysis with a particular emphasis on CRE’s claim that the peer reviews conducted by NOAA do not meet the requirements of a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment as set forth in NOAA and OMB DQA guidelines.
The Need for Programmatic Reform
NOAA is working on four regulatory programs which if finalized in their current form will seriously curtail if not lead to the eventual termination of offshore drilling in US waters.
BOEM Announces Updated Financial Assurance and Risk Management Requirements for Offshore Leases
Jul 21
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management notified companies holding oil and gas leases in federal waters that BOEM is updating financial assurance and risk management requirements for decommissioning and removing a company’s offshore production facilities.
BOEM’s new Notice to Lessees and Operators details new procedures to determine a lessee’s ability to carry out its lease obligations — primarily the decommissioning of Outer Continental Shelf facilities — and whether to require lessees to furnish additional financial assurance.
The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service has issued regulations governing related Letters of Authorization in response to a request from Apache Alaska Corporation for authorization to take marine mammals, by harassment, incidental to its oil and gas exploration seismic survey program in Cook Inlet, Alaska. According to NMFS, “This action will put the applicant into compliance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and minimize impacts to marine mammals in Cook Inlet.” These regulations are effective August 19, 2016 through July 20, 2021.
The U.S. Department of the Interior has published final new drilling rules for oil and gas in the U.S. Arctic Outer Continental Shelf. These Arctic-specific regulations focus solely on OCS exploratory drilling operations from floating vessels within the U.S. Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
Among other requirements, the new rules require “operators to develop an Integrated Operations Plan addressing all phases of a proposed Arctic OCS exploration program and submit it to BOEM in advance of filing an Exploration Plan. The regulations require companies to have access to – and the ability to promptly deploy – source control and containment equipment, such as capping stacks and containment domes, while drilling below or working below the surface casing.
The U.S. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement published the following article on its website:
“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) announced today that the maximum civil penalty rate for Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) violations will increase from $40,000 to $42,017 a day for each violation. This legislatively mandated increase is contained in an interim final rule which is effective July 28, 2016.
‘BSEE uses civil penalties as an enforcement tool to deter unsafe practices that are not in compliance with regulations,’ said BSEE Director Brian Salerno. ‘We review penalty rates annually to make sure they keep pace with inflation. This ensures they remain a mechanism that emphasizes to industry the importance of safe and environmentally responsible operations.’
