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NEPA procedures to be reviewed, tightened Obama administration will ask Congress to extend MMS’ 30-day deadline to 90 days for acting on oil and gas exploration plans Petroleum News
The Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of the Interior said May 14 that they would conduct a review of the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s National Environmental Policy Act procedures for outer continental shelf oil and gas exploration and development.
The Obama administration also said it intended to propose that Congress add 60 days to a 30-day “congressionally-mandated deadline” for MMS to act on exploration plans submitted by oil and gas operators. The 90-day timeline could be further extended to “complete environmental and safety reviews, as needed,” which would “provide MMS more time to conduct additional environmental analysis on exploration plans, if needed.”
Obama administration notes work started in February Every agency in the executive branch of the federal government has a responsibility to implement the National Environmental Policy Act.
Under NEPA, the Council on Environmental Quality has the job of “ensuring that federal agencies meet their obligations under the Act,” Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in the May 14 press release, noting that “the Obama administration had already taken steps to modernize NEPA and increase oversight by issuing guidance to do just that in February.”
“We remain focused on providing every resource we can to support the massive response effort under way at the Deepwater Horizon, but we are also aggressively and quickly investigating what happened and what can be done to prevent this type of incident in the future,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, referring to the April 20 blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “A review of the overall NEPA procedures for the MMS is an important part of the ongoing comprehensive and thorough investigation of this incident, but it also continues the reform effort that we have been undertaking at MMS and throughout Interior.”
Tightening up NEPA NEPA requires all U.S. agencies to consider the potential environmental effects of their proposed major actions and to engage the public before the agencies decide whether and how they will proceed. Complying with NEPA means agencies must complete NEPA environmental reviews of proposed major actions, which may include broad planning efforts and specific projects.
MMS applies the governmentwide framework for conducting a NEPA review, including an Environmental Impact Statement, an Environmental Assessment, or a Categorical Exclusion. MMS also follows Interior specific NEPA regulations and MMS procedures that are tailored to its authorities and actions.
In February, the council proposed steps to “modernize and reinvigorate NEPA by issuing draft guidance on: when and how federal agencies must consider greenhouse gas emissions and climate change in their proposed actions; clarifying appropriateness of findings of no significant impact and specifying when there is a need to monitor environmental mitigation commitments; clarifying the use of categorical exclusions; and enhancing public tools for reporting on NEPA activities,” the release said.
Under the proposed guidance, the council will increase its NEPA oversight role by regularly reviewing agencies’ use of categorical exclusions, the release said. More information can be found at:
www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/nepa.
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