Obama Opens East Coast To Oil Exploration For First Time In Decades Amid Wildlife Concerns The Obama administration is reopening the Eastern Seaboard to offshore oil and gas exploration, approving seismic surveys using sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy deposits deep beneath the ocean floor. Fridays announcement is the first real step toward what could be a transformation in coastal states, creating thousands of jobs to support a new energy infrastructure. But it dismayed environmentalists and people who owe their livelihoods to fisheries and tourism. The cannons create noise pollution in waters shared by whales, dolphins and turtles, sending sound waves many times louder than a jet engine reverberating through the deep every ten seconds for weeks at a time. Arguing that endangered species could be harmed was the environmental groups best hope for extending a decades-old ban against drilling off the U.S. Atlantic coast. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledged that thousands of sea creatures will be harmed even as it approved opening the outer continental shelf from Delaware to Florida to exploration. Energy companies need the data as they prepare to apply for drilling leases in 2018, when current congressional limits expire. The bureaus decision reflects a carefully analyzed and balanced approach that will allow us to increase our understanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments, acting BOEM Director Walter Cruickshank said in a statement. Sonic cannons are already used in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and in other offshore oil operations around the world. They are towed behind boats, sending down pulses of sound that reverberate beneath the sea floor and rebound to the surface. Hydrophones capture the results, which computers translate into high resolution, three-dimensional images. Its like a sonogram of the Earth, said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association in Washington DC. You cant see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the Earth that might hold oil and gas.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 07:20:25 +0000
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