Delayed seismic testing decision irks energy

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s longawaited decision on whether to allow seismic testing for oil and gas beneath the Atlantic Ocean is causing heartburn for the energy industry, which eagerly awaits the fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s push to allow offshore drilling in U.S. coastal waters.

Five seismic survey companies want federal permission to shoot loud, pressurized air blasts into the ocean every 10 to 12 seconds around-the-clock for months at a time over 330,000 square miles of ocean from Florida to Delaware, in search of fossil fuel deposits beneath the ocean floor.

If approved, the activity would reverse an Obama-era denial of testing permits in the Atlantic and represent a major advance of Trump’s “AmericaFirst Offshore Energy Strategy.”

After a public comment period ended last July, many stakeholders expected the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to quickly approve the “incidental harassment authorizations” needed to move the permit applications forward.

But more than 10 months later, NOAA, one of two federal agencies that will decide the matter, still hasn’t approved the authorizations, which would allow the seismic testing to harass or injure small numbers of marine mammals. This is prohibited under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Scientists fear that long-term exposure to air blast noise could cause hearing loss and impair breeding, feeding, foraging and communication activity among dolphins, endangered whales, other marine mammals and sea turtles.

“We’re in the process of evaluating over 117,000 comments that we received on that, many of them of a highly technical, legal, policy nature. So that process has taken a little bit longer than we expect. But we expect within the next few weeks to have made a decision on those authorizations,” Chris Oliver, assistant administrator for fisheries at NOAA, told a Senate panel April 25.

One month later, the energy industry is still waiting. And it is openly chiding the Trump administration over the slow process.

In a recent blog post, Nikki Martin, president of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, and Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said the “delay is a complete bureaucratic breakdown by federal agencies in what should be an otherwise straightforward process. Approve or deny is simple and clear.”

If the authorizations are granted, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management would have to complete an environmental study before it decides whether to approve the final testing permits.

Some lawmakers and business leaders have raised concerns about the economic effect seismic testing and offshore drilling could have on Atlantic Coast tourism and fishing.