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Coastal & Marine Issues - Off Shore Energy

"And the pipeline is a symbiotic thing. We will put in the pipeline because you are drilling and you are drilling because we are putting in the pipeline."

-El Paso Vice President Bob Otjen

A Texas-based company is proposing large-scale offshore energy infrastructure for the Gulf of Maine and the Bush Administration is moving to facilitate approval of these and other projects around the country. These proposals, that could undermine the longstanding moratoria on leasing for oil and gas production in the rich fishing grounds of Georges Bank, must be stopped now - BEFORE our wild ocean is turned into an industrial park for Big Oil.

Not-so-Blue Atlantic

El Paso, a large U.S. pipeline company, is expected to apply soon to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a permit to construct a 750-plus mile 1 billion cubic feet per day natural gas pipeline that would run along the seabed over or near Georges Bank.  A potential route for this project (dubbed for obvious public relations purposes "Blue Atlantic") would go from East of Sable Island, along the Scotian Shelf and Georges Bank, come ashore in eastern Nova Scotia, then head south for delivery to US markets in New York or New Jersey.  

El Paso's Vice President Bob Ontjen explained that this route has the advantage of efficiency as a single line offshore to which numerous developments can run ashore. This configuration, he noted, makes the pipeline an enabling infrastructure that could conceivably render marginal gas reserves economically viable.  Canadian and US environmentalists fear that the pipeline will accelerate extraction of oil and gas in the waters of Southern Nova Scotia, in particular, the sensitive waters adjacent to the Georges Bank moratorium area, Browns Bank, and the recently declared 'Coral Box' protected area in the N.E. Channel. 

A pipeline across Georges Bank and the US Gulf of Maine could also be the first step to overturn Canadian and American moratoria on leasing for oil and gas extraction in place since the 1980's.

What You Can Do:

Request that you be added to the mailing list as an interested party for the Blue Atlantic project, Docket No. PF 02-01. Send a letter to Federal Energy Regulatory, Commission, Office of the Secretary, 888 First St., N.E., Washington, DC 20426, or email John.Leiss@ferc.gov 

Websites for additional background information:

 http://www.cnie.org/nle/crsreports/briefingbooks/oceans/v.cfm#Status%20of%20the%20Issue

Congressional Briefing Book on Oceans includes history of offshore oil leasing moratoria.

 www.ferc.gov

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- see especially Energy Infrastructure Activities; new Expedited Pre-Filing Process

 http://www.ferc.gov/gas/stakeholder.pdf

"The materials and information found in the Blue Atlantic Transmission System web site are provided for convenience and informational purposes only. They are not warranted or guaranteed to be correct, complete, or up-to-date. The materials and information could include technical inaccuracies and typographical errors, and you should not act or rely on any information in the web site without independently investigating the accuracy and completeness of the information presented."

 http://www.offshore-environment.com/resources.html

Good information on the environmental impact of offshore oil and gas extraction.

 http://www.oilonline.com/news/features/oe/20020815.Explorer.9421.asp

Explorers set sights on Sable sweet spot from: Offshore Engineer by: Rick von Flatern   Thursday, August 15, 2002

Amid a few significant discoveries, signs of more to come and a flurry of activity, some observers say the exploration and production industry offshore Nova Scotia is about to become the next world-class offshore oil and gas arena. Rick von Flatern reports from the Canadian east coast province. In his offices in one of twin high rise office towers overlooking Halifax Harbor, El Paso vice president Bob Otjen overlays a map of the US Gulf coast with one of the same scale showing blocks of oil field leases offshore Nova Scotia.

The superimposed Canadian acreage stretches from a spot on the US map near the Texas-Mexico border to well inside the Florida panhandle. On the eastern third of this chain of blocks that runs roughly 150 miles out and parallel to the Nova Scotia shoreline is what has come to be known around the Halifax oilfield community as the Sable Hot Spot. A group of blocks on the Scotian shelf, named for the treacherous Sable Island that is the final resting place of many an ill-fated ship, Sable is the birthplace of the modern offshore Nova Scotia oil industry.