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NMFS issues final Arctic offshore EIS Agency will only allow one offshore drilling program to be conducted per year in waters of each of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
The National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a final environmental impact statement for offshore seismic surveying and exploration drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The FEIS sets the ground rules for the issue of marine mammal incidental harassment authorizations for exploration activities, and for the issue of geological and geophysical permits by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
One drilling program Under the FEIS, NMFS has opted to limit exploration drilling to one drilling program per year in each of the seas. The final EIS allows up to three seismic surveys per year in the Chukchi Sea and up to four surveys in the Beaufort. In each sea, up to three site clearance and shallow hazard surveys will be allowed annually. And in the Beaufort Sea a single on-ice seismic program will be allowed each year.
The FEIS defines a drilling program as exploration drilling conducted by a single operator using a single drilling unit such as a drillship.
Companies operating in state or federal offshore waters require incidental harassment authorizations to avoid violating the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, if wildlife is disturbed as a result of industrial activities. A company conducting a seismic survey on the outer continental shelf requires a geological and geophysical permit from BOEM. The FEIS aims to use a programmatic approach to the issue of authorizations and permits, rather than have the Fisheries Service just react individually to each proposed exploration activity. The idea is to take into account the cumulative impacts of multiple operations.
Started in 2016 The EIS dates back to an effort in 2006 by the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the precursor agency to BOEM, to prepare a programmatic environmental assessment for the conducting of multiple seismic surveys on the Arctic outer continental shelf. At the time there had been an upsurge in interest in oil exploration in the Arctic offshore. The original environmental assessment initiative eventually morphed into an EIS that encompassed both seismic surveying and exploration drilling, with the Fisheries Service becoming the lead agency in the effort.
In 2011 the Fisheries Service issued a draft EIS containing five alternative approaches, none of which allowed more than two drilling programs per year in either the Beaufort or the Chukchi. A subsequent draft published in 2013 responded to concerns expressed by the oil industry about that earlier draft by including alternatives allowing up to four drilling programs per year. The document also retained alternatives with tighter drilling restrictions. And, being a draft document, the 2013 document did not opt for any specific option as a preferred alternative for a final rule on the issues addressed.
And, while the FEIS contains essentially the same alternatives as the 2013 draft, albeit with some changes to some required mitigation measures, the Fisheries Service has opted for an alternative with a minimum number of allowed drilling programs.
Mitigation measures In addition to placing limits on the number of concurrent exploration projects allowed, the FEIS requires a standard set of mitigation measures to always be applied for exploration activities, including the shutdown of seismic operations in specified circumstances where mammals are deemed too close to seismic sound sources, specified altitudes for support aircraft and measures to avoid adverse impacts on subsistence hunting. Additional mitigation measures may apply to a specific exploration project, depending on evaluations of that project by the Fisheries Service and BOEM.
The FEIS also includes an analysis of the potential impact of a very large oil spill in either the Chukchi or the Beaufort Sea. This section of the document, much of the text of which comes from an EIS conducted for the 2008 oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea, enables an evaluation of the outcome of a possible but very unlikely major loss-of-control incident for an exploration well.
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