NOYO NEWS

(*note: April Fools – by Dan Bacher)

Department of Fish and Wildlife News Advisory: For Immediate Release

Media Contact: Joe Destructo, CDFW Communications, 916-NOT-THER

Blackwater to enforce California’s marine protected areas

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham on April 1, 2013 announced the beginning of a historic partnership between Blackwater (now Academi Corporation) and the CDFW to enforce the statewide network of marine protected areas created under the landmark Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.

The Western States Petroleum Association, Walmart, Safeway Corporation and the Resources Legacy Foundation, all avid backers of the MLPA Initiative, have generously offered to pay for the costs of enforcement.

Bonham announced that the Academi Corporation – previously known as Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide – will be enforcing these “Yosemites of the Sea” and glorious marine parks in an innovative public-private partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“It’s time to get tough with anglers who cross the line into our pristine marine reserves, now that the glorious network of marine protected areas, created under the most open and transparent process in world history, is in place from the California/Oregon stateline to the U.S./Mexico border,” said Bonham. “Blackwater is renowned for its no-holds barred enforcement style and we want every angler to know that they will treat violators of these marine reserves with no mercy.”

“However, oil companies, municipal polluters, corporate aquaculture operations, the U.S. military, and wind, wave and nuclear power companies don’t need to worry, since only fishing and gathering are prohibited in these wonderful new underwater parks,” emphasized Bonham.

Bonham noted that volunteers from the Coalition of Ocean Greenwashers (COG) and other Walton Family Foundation-funded environmental NGOs will assist the CDFW and the Academi (formerly Blackwater) in their surveillance of fishermen.

“The visionary public-private partnership between the state of California and the Academi corporation will hopefully pave the way for the wholistic protection of our marine waters through the removal of all fishermen and Tribal gatherers,” said Leon Panetta, longtime backer of the MLPA Initiative, former CIA Director and former Secretary of Defense. “Their removal will allow the military, private contractors, oil industry and ocean industrialists to restore the historic bounty of our oceans by bombing, drilling and exploiting them. Protection is destruction and destruction is protection.”

Panetta also announced that the CIA has graciously agreed to offer its drones to assist the private contractor, CDFW and volunteers in the surveillance and apprehension of violators of the historic network of marine protected areas that was completed on December 19, 2012.

“This unprecedented cooperation between the federal government, CDFW, private corporations and volunteers in the enforcement of marine protected areas marks a new dawn in environmental protection,” said Governor Jerry Brown. “If the public-private partnership between the state and Blackwater turns out to be as fruitful as we predict it will be, we anticipate using Blackwater and other private contractors to remove pesky Delta farmers from their land to make way for the construction of my peripheral tunnels to deliver water to needy San Joaquin Valley farmers such as Stewart Resnick of Paramount Farms and to oil industry visionaries to expand hydraulic fracturing in California.”

“The removal of those tacky hook-and-line fishermen and seaweed gatherers from vast areas of the ocean clears the path for environmentally sustainable activities including offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing, ocean mining, seismic testing, wind and wave energy projects, aquaculture and urban development,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association and the Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast. “I’m thrilled to hear that an organization with such a stellar reputation as Blackwater will be helping the Department of Fish and Wildlife to enforce California’s visionary Yosemites of the Sea.”

Bonham added that the Department, in conjunction with Blackwater, will also step up its enforcement of the new sturgeon fishing regulations, reminding anglers that the penalties for catching sturgeon without obtaining a punch card are “extremely severe.”

Anglers can view the video taken on a sturgeon trip on San Pablo Bay by Gordon Hough, captain of the Morning Star, demonstrating the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s new “get tough” policy in action:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfe7YhBTE9Y&feature

* * *

“Each individual drilling of a well can use 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 gallons of water,” she said. “Each platform can have multiple drilled ‘wells’ in a 4 mile diameter, a 2 mile radius from the well platform. Each well can be fracked multiple times.” - Lynn Krug

Krug also pointed out that not only will fracking operations need lots of water, but they will dispose of toxic fluid waste, furthering endangering water supplies and the environment.

<————>

Burt Wilson of Public Water News Service asks Natural Resources Agency Deputy Director Jerry Meral about water being used for fracking in California. Photo by Dan Bacher. 

Water for fracking: How much does the oil/gas industry use? 

by Dan Bacher

During the contentious public Bay Delta Conservation Plan public meeting held in West Sacramento on March 20, Natural Resources Agency Deputy Director Jerry Meral twice evaded a question by Burt Wilson of Public Water News Service about water being used for fracking of oil and natural gas wells in California. (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/22/18734066.php)

However, in a post on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) website the same day, Richard Stapler, Deputy Secretary for Communications of the California Natural Resources Agency, claimed that only 8 acre feet of water is used every year for hydraulic fracturing in California, in an apparent attempt to minimize the amount of water employed for fracking. (http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/blog/blog/13-03-20/Oil_Water.aspx_)

Fishermen, environmentalists, tribal leaders, family farmers and others opponents of the peripheral tunnels fear that the water diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would be used for hydraulic fracturing in Monterey Shale deposits on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and in coastal areas.

“With apologies to all the sci-fi fans out there, I have to say I deplore the term ‘fracking,’” said Stapler. “It’s shorthand for an important process called hydraulic fracturing used in the oil extraction business. The process uses water and a small mix of chemicals to fracture and prop open rock formations thousands of feet under the earth’s surface to allow for pumping of crude oil.”

“So, it’s helpful to know that only 8 acre feet of water is used every year in California for hydraulic fracturing. That’s enough water for 32 average families for a year. For additional context, the average amount of water we move through the Delta in a typical year is 4.8 million acre feet (though it varies by year),” he stated.

He cited information from the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, & Geothermal Resources as the justification for his figure.

“As for the total amount used, the best source of information currently is the voluntary reporting to the FracFocus site,” according to Stapler. “The site lists 728 hydraulically fractured wells in California. There’s a PDF document attached to each of those wells that includes, among other things, the amount of water used to fracture the well.”

“We did a random sample of 30 of those wells and came up with 2,621,272 gallons (8 acre feet) used – an average of 87,375 gallons per well. That may or may not be representative, but at least it gives you some idea. The range was from about 10,000 gallons to just over 200,000 gallons,” Stapler continued.

Stapler contrasted the amount of water he said is used by fracking operations in the eastern U.S. and California.

“In the eastern U.S., hydraulic fracturing tends to use significantly more water than in California,” Stapler contended. “That’s because the most efficient way to get at natural gas trapped in shale is to drill horizontally for thousands of feet and then fracture stimulate the reservoir along the horizontal section using up to 13 million gallons of water. At least at present, most California wells are drilled vertically, with any fracture interval being much smaller.”

Yet in a footnote at the bottom, Stapler states, “For reference, you could multiply the average of 87,375 gallons with every injection well in the state (about 25,000) and still come up with a relatively small amount of water — 6,721 acre feet, or water for about 27,000 average families for a year.”

Stapler hasn’t yet responded to my email inquiry over the enormous discrepancy in the water he claims is used for fracking per year– 8 acre feet of water in one section of his article and 6,721 acre feet in another.

Fracking opponents say amount of water used is much higher 

Lynn Krug from the Stop Fracking California facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/StopFrackingCalifornia) and other fracking opponents say the water used by companies to extract natural gas and oil through fracking in California is much greater than Stapler or the oil industry claim it is.

“Each individual drilling of a well can use 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 gallons of water,” she said. “Each platform can have multiple drilled ‘wells’ in a 4 mile diameter, a 2 mile radius from the well platform. Each well can be fracked multiple times.”

She said the use and allocation of water is “dire to California,” given the shortages now and in a potential drought, for fresh water to Delta aquatic life, agriculture, drinking water and fire protection.

She also pointed out that not only will fracking operations need lots of water, but they will dispose of toxic fluid waste, furthering endangering water supplies and the environment.

“The disposal of the toxic fluid waste is a further endangerment to contamination of existing fresh water, human safety, and agriculture,” Krug stated. “Fracking is an insecure process as repeatedly proven by the national reporting of failures. California’s own drilling history is lax by the failure to monitor these sites and makes it appear that the process is safe – it is not.”

Burt Wilson, a staunch opponent of the Delta tunnels and fracking, responded to Stapler’s blog post, “There is no way to prove what Stapler is talking about, but in many cases the wells can’t get the water yet! That’s why the need for the tunnels! With the tunnels in, they can frack ’til their heart’s content.”

Describing the information voluntarily provided by the oil industry on water for fracking as “propaganda,” Wilson stated, “It is misleading as hell. I asked Occidental Oil–who plan 154 to create fracking jobs soon–where they get their water and they refused to tell me.”

“Stapler wants a person to believe that the ‘new’ fracking water is already being used, but it’s not. Fresh water is still the staple and the tunnels will certainly supply it when the real fracking kicks in after the tunnels are built–if ever,” said Wilson.

So what is the actual amount of water now used for fracking in Califonia right now – 8 acre feet of water, 6,721 acre feet, or much, much more as fracking opponents contend?

Kern County oil industry uses vast quantities of water 

One thing is for certain – oil companies use big quantities of water in their current oil drilling operations in Kern County, although the amount specifically used in fracking operations is hard to pinpoint. Much of this water this comes through the State Water Project’s California Aqueduct and the Central Valley Water Project’s Delta-Mendota Canal, spurring increasing conflicts between local farmers and oil companies over available water.

“What’s resoundingly clear, however, is that it takes more water than ever just to sustain Kern County’s ebbing oil production,” according to Jeremy Miller’s 2011 investigative piece, “The Colonization of Kern County,” in Orion Magazine (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6047/)

“At the height of California oil production in 1985, oil companies in Kern County pumped 1.1 billion barrels of water underground to extract 256 million barrels of oil—a ratio of roughly four and a half barrels of water for every barrel of oil,” according to Miller. “In 2008, Kern producers injected nearly 1.3 billion barrels of water to extract 162 million barrels of oil—a ratio of nearly eight barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced.”

Miller’s investigation has yielded some alarming data on how much water has been used by the oil industry in Kern County and statewide since the 1960s.

“In the time since steamflooding was pioneered here in the fields of Kern County in the 1960s, oil companies statewide have pumped roughly 2.8 trillion gallons of fresh water—or, in the parlance of agriculture, nearly 9 million acre-feet—underground in pursuit of the region’s tarry oil,” said Miller. “Essentially, enough water has been injected into the oil fields here over the last forty years to create a lake one foot deep covering more than thirteen thousand square miles—nearly twice the surface area of Lake Ontario.”

Miller also said he was surprised to learn from local water authorities that a “good deal of the water for steamflooding comes from the same source that supplies the region’s farms: the Central Valley and State Water Projects,” although he said exact information on the amount of water used from the projects for oil drilling operations is not required by the state or federal governments.

“Oil companies call the fresh water they buy from outside sources ‘makeup water,” wrote Miller. “It’s difficult to gauge exactly how much of this makeup water comes from the State Water Project, since oil companies are not required to disclose the sources of their water, and no state agency tracks the fate of State Water Project water after it has been sent down the pipe.”

As more information becomes available, I will report on the water used now, as well as the water that could potentially be used in the future, as the oil industry increases fracking operations in California.

Delta advocates and anti-fracking activists oppose the construction of Governor Jerry Brown’s peripheral tunnels because the project will likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species, according to agency and independent scientists. They believe that the “dual conveyance” proposed under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan will make an already horrific ecosystem collapse even worse.

Between 2000 and 2011, more than 130,000,000 fish were “salvaged” in the massive state and federal pumps diverting water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, according to a white paper written by Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). Considering that recent studies point out that 5 to 10 times more fish are lost than salvaged, the actual number of fish lost could be 1.3 billion or higher. (http://www.restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CSPA-BDCP-Fish-Screens-Revised.pdf)

Three legislators introduce legislation to stop fracking 

In other fracking news, three California assembly members have introduced bills to halt hydraulic fracturing in the state and mandate review of the threats the practice poses to the environment and public health.

The legislation was introduced as the oil industry, represented by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association and the former chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” in Southern California, is now pushing for increasing fracking for oil and natural gas in shale deposits in Kern County and coastal areas.

Reflecting growing concern about fracking’s threat to the environment and public health, Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City) and Adrin Nazarian (D-East San Fernando Valley) have introduced three pieces of legislation — A.B. 1301, A.B. 1323 and A.B. 649 — that would halt fracking in California until the state determines whether and under what conditions fracking can be done without threatening human health and the environment.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Environment California and Clean Water Action are supporting these bills to halt fracking in California.

“Given that fracking is inherently unsafe and poses a direct threat to our communities, we welcome legislation that provides for a comprehensive statewide moratorium,” said Food & Water Watch Pacific Region Director Kristin Lynch.

“We applaud these legislators for their leadership in working to protect Californians from a dangerous fracking boom that could be devastating for the state,” said Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity. “State regulators have shrugged off fracking’s dangers, so it’s up to lawmakers to stop oil companies from polluting our air, contaminating our water and undermining our fight against climate change.”

The groups said fracking has been tied to water and air pollution in other states, and it releases huge quantities of methane, a dangerously potent greenhouse gas. More than 600 wells in at least nine California counties were fracked in 2011 alone, and oil companies are gearing up to frack oil deposits in the Monterey Shale, a geological formation that lies beneath some of the state’s most productive farmland and important wildlife habitat.

For more information, go to: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2013/fracking-03-22-2013.html

* * *

Australia, with the world’s largest network of Marine Protected Areas plans to be the world’s largest exporter of LNG, and ocean fracked natural gas. Every Australian MPA shown, is also mapped by basin for drilling and corresponding development (FLNG) or pipeline to shore facility, except the Coral Reef MPA. If California is to follow Australia’s lead in Marine Protected Areas, Floating LNG processing facilities (FLNG) will be moored offshore. We may even see warmer oceans caused by Cyclic Steam Injection and fracking of conventional oil and gas wells on the seafloor just beyond California State waters and nearshore ecosystems.

Marine Protected Areas and Offshore Natural Gas Basins, or 
Ecology and The 21st Century Biosphere Nightmare

By Tomas DiFiore

The biosphere refers to all of the life on Earth. The biosphere can be visualized as a thin surface layer on the Earth from 11,000 meters below sea level to 15,000 meters above sea level.

If California is to follow Australia’s lead in Marine Protected Areas, Floating LNG processing facilities (FLNG) will be moored offshore. We may even see warmer oceans caused by Cyclic Steam Injection and fracking of conventional oil and gas wells on the seafloor just beyond California State waters and nearshore ecosystems.

How will regulations apply to:
High Volume High Pressure Slick Water Directional Horizontal Deviant Hydraulic Fracturing or fracking the unassociated gas fields off the California coast, drilling back towards shore to frac from beyond the 3 mile limit of State Waters jurisdiction.

As Dan Bacher pointed out his article on Monday Jan 14th, 2013-
California’s New ‘Marine Reserve’ Network Doesn’t Protect The Ocean
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/01/14/18730187.php

And David Gurney, independent journalist and co-chair of the Ocean Protection Coalition, blasted Reheis-Boyd’s role in pushing for increased fracking in California.
http://noyonews.net/?p=8215

Last year, “when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced new lease-sales for Bureau of Land Management lands in California for ‘fracking’ development,” said Gurney. “Offshore areas were showing up on maps: reservoirs of underwater natural gas deposits, that lie under the ocean off Santa Barbara and Southern California.”

“It’s clear the government and petroleum officials want to ‘frack’ in the very same areas Reheis-Boyd was appointed to oversee as a ‘guardian’ of marine habitat protection for the MLPA ‘Initiative,’” emphasized Gurney.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and former Chair of the California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative Initiative (MLPAi) Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast, and BRTF member on the Central Coast, the North Central Coast, and the North Coast, thinks ‘fracking is safe’.
http://noyonews.net/?p=8638

The innovation of FLNG may reduce the immediate need for Enhanced Oil Recovery by virtue of the fact that once production drops at a wellsite, the well can be abandoned and the FLNG vessel can move on to a virgin gas field and new well. But what Agency will oversee well abandonment, certainly not BLM with their track record? Does DOGGR have wetsuits?

Even at $13 Billion per mega-ship, it’s less than half the cost of land based facilities, less pipeline, and likely no Federal or International Standards for Environmental Regulation or Air Quality.

Marine Protection, Wastewater Injection Wells
The criteria and procedures for ocean dumping permits and for the designation of ocean dumping sites can be found in EPA’s ocean dumping regulations at 40 CFR Parts 220 to 229.
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_05/40cfr228_05.html

In 1972, Congress enacted the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (MPRSA, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act) to prohibit the dumping of material into the ocean that would unreasonably degrade or endanger human health or the marine environment.
http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/oceandumping/

Summary of the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act
http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/mprsa.html

The MPRSA implements the requirements of the London Convention, which is the international treaty governing ocean dumping.
http://water.epa.gov/type/oceb/oceandumping/dredgedmaterial/londonconvention.cfm

Oil and Gas fracking flowback and wastewater may not be covered under the London Convention. The London Convention prohibits the disposal at sea of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter. However, all materials, including natural and inert materials, contain natural radionuclides and are frequently contaminated with artificial radionuclides from such anthropogenic sources as fallout due to past atmospheric nuclear testing. Therefore, the Contracting Parties to the London Convention recognized the need to develop definitions and guidelines whereby candidate materials (those wastes or other matter not otherwise prohibited from disposal at sea in accordance with Annex I to the Convention) containing de minimis levels of radionuclides could be disposed of pursuant to the provisions of this Convention.
de minimis (PDF 15 pp, 717K)
http://www.imo.org/includes/blastData.asp/doc_id=7566/Generic_guidance_on_de_minimis.pdf

Oil and Gas fracking flowback and wastewater may not be covered under the Ocean Dumping Act of the US.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ocean_Dumping_Act%2C_United_States

BIGGER THAN BIG
Royal Dutch Shell has placed an order for the first ever floating LNG plant, September 20 2012.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Shell-to-Build-the-Worlds-First-Ever-Floating-LNG-Plant.html
The vessel, called Prelude, will be the largest in the world, weighing six times more than the largest aircraft carrier, and measuring more in length than the Empire State building is in height. The huge ship will be built in Korea and then moved to the north-west coast of Australia, where it will provide a cheaper option to onshore LNG plants there.

Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. to GDF Suez SA of France likewise want to turn gas into liquid at sea, where many of the largest finds were made in the last decade.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-19/shell-leads-lng-competitors-out-to-sea-with-biggest-ship-energy

Royal Dutch Shell is first, as the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas producers readies to move their $170 billion industry onto barges at sea and tap remote (stranded) gas fields.

Global Demand, Supply, and Technology, Stepping Across New Boundaries
According to Shell, “there is a lot of undeveloped gas in deep water in the world. There are several hundred trillion cubic feet of gas that have already been found.”

Demand for LNG will more than double to about 460 million tons by 2025, according to Deutsche Bank AG forecast in August 2012. Floating LNG plants will supply about 3 percent of the fuel. Customers imported about 331 billion cubic meters of LNG last year worth about $170 billion based on an average price in Japan, according to BP Plc (BP/) and LNG Japan Corp. data.

Korea is currently the world’s largest builder/exporter of Nuclear Power Plants (4 this year) and is also building the Prelude for Shell. Because it’s being constructed in Korea, Shell is not exposed to labor costs in Australia. Shell’s partner building Prelude is Korea Gas Corporation.

Shell plans to use FLNG technology beyond Australia’s shores and expand to Europe, Africa and the Americas. Floating LNG technology doesn’t have the same “complexities” of onshore developments. Once a field is depleted, the FLNG vessel will be able to relocate to another virgin field.

The California MLPA(i) refused petitions for over two years by the North Coast to ban drilling and hydrocarbon transport through MPAs.

As Australia proudly boasts of having the world’s largest Marine Reserve Network, including the NW offshore waters. Australia’s shoreline here is 250 km (150 miles) from the 2009 Montara blowout. The government’s response from the beginning through to the settlement, has been driven by its determination to expand the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry as quickly as possible, providing a bonanza for giant corporations, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell, that have projects underway off the north-west coast.

Oil Slicks, Seaweed Farms, Value Added Compensation
In 2009, and 2010, significant impacts to marine fisheries and seaweed harvests occurred across the globe from each other due to oil leaks at the wellhead on the seafloor.

The BP Deepwater Horizon wellhead was at an ocean depth of almost 5,000 feet.
The Montara Oil Field wellhead leak in the Timor Sea, was at an ocean depth of 250 feet.

Thousands of barrels of oil gushed into the Timor sea over a period of 74 days following a blowout at PTTEP Australasia’s West Atlas rig in the Montara Oil Field in the Timor Sea between NW Australia and Timor three years ago. The slick from the Montara oil field spread as far as Indonesian waters and it grew to almost 35,000 square miles.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timor_Sea_oil_spill

In the Gulf of Mexico, from April 20 to Sept 19, 2010, 4.9 million barrels, or 205 million gallons had escaped from the BP Horizon Deepwater rig and wellhead disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill covered an area of about 68,000 square miles of ocean. The final estimate reported that 53,000 barrels per day were escaping from the well just before it was capped on 15 July. It is believed that the daily flow rate diminished over time, starting at about 62,000 barrels per day and decreasing as the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher was gradually depleted.

In 5000 feet of ocean, underwater oil plumes developed in the water column.
On 15 May 2010, researchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology, identified oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The shallowest oil plume the group detected was at about 2,300 feet, while the deepest was near the seafloor at about 4,593 feet.

In June, NOAA released a report which confirmed deepwater oil plumes in the Gulf and that they did originate from BP’s well, citing a “preponderance of evidence” gathered from four separate sampling cruises. In October 2010, scientists reported a continuous plume of over 22 miles in length at a depth of about 3,600 ft. That plume persisted for several months without substantial degradation.

Laden with dispersants; oil accumulated on the seafloor.
On 10 September 2010, Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico announced her team’s findings of a substantial layer of oily sediment stretching for dozens of miles in all directions suggesting that a lot of oil did not evaporate or dissipate but may have settled to the seafloor. She describes seeing layers of oily material covering the bottom of the seafloor, in some places more than 2 inches thick.

By January 2011, USF researchers found layers of oil near the wellhead that were “up to 5 times thicker” than recorded by the team in August 2010. USF’s David Hollander remarked, “Oil’s presence on the ocean floor didn’t diminish with time; it grew” and he pointed out, “the layer is distributed very widely,” radiating far from the wellhead.

Another Settlement, Another Hemisphere Around The Globe, Near Jakarta: October 2012
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article1264278.ece
PTT Exploration Production (PTTEP) has been fined A$550,000 (US$526,000) by the Australian Government for the 2009 Montara incident. The company got off lightly, given it had faced maximum fines of US$1.75 million.

Considered to be Australia’s worst oil disaster, the well blowout on the Montara platform in August 2009 resulted in oil and gas condensate leaking into the Timor Sea for a total of 74 days. According to the Australian Associated Press (AAP), three of the charges had carried a maximum penalty of A$550,000. AAP reported that Magistrate John Lowndes had offered PTTEP a 25% discount for the guilty pleas, fining it A$495,000 for the first three charges, which related to the Offshore Petroleum and greenhouse Gas Storage Act. The company was fined A$15,000 for the fourth charge, well below the maximum of $50,000, AAP stated.

Let’s see: $550,000 divided by 74 (days) = a fine of $7400.00 a day.

Indonesia had sought US$2.4 billion in compensation for damage to reefs and fisheries.

Australia’s estimated gas reserves: $1 trillion, and a forecast that LNG exports would exceed a total $24 billion by 2017-18, nearly doubling over a decade.

CONFLICTING REPORTS
According to one report prepared by an investigation commission from Australia, 2,000-4,000 barrels of oil and gas and poisonous condensate leaked to the Timor Sea daily, polluting more than 35,000 square miles of Australian waters. Meanwhile, independent geologists in Australia and Indonesia stated that the Montara well spilled out 5,000-10,000 barrels of oil a day to the Timor Sea and 95 percent of the polluted waters were in Indonesian waters and territory.

Australia Committed To Resolve Timor Sea Pollution Issue, September 21 2012 Kupang,
The Australian government will continue to hold talks with the Indonesia government in order to resolve the pollution problem in the East Nusa Tenggara waters, according to Australian ambassador to Indonesia Greg Moriarty. “The Australian government remains committed to settle the pollution issue,” he said here on Friday.

Talks with the Government, but no money for the villagers, fishers and harvesters.

It may be that the Gillard government’s response has been driven by its determination to expand the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry as quickly as possible, providing a bonanza for giant corporations, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell, that have projects underway off the north-west coast. Ferguson last year estimated Australia’s gas reserves at $1 trillion and forecast that LNG exports would total $24 billion by 2017-18, nearly doubling over a decade.

Baled Seaweed Exports were limited in 2012
Months after the Montara oil spill, the domestic seaweed processing industry has not grown rapidly. From DKP 2008 data, 15% of exports are processed seaweed, while the rest is in the form of raw baled weed. The chairman of the Indonesian Seaweed Commission, Farid Ma’ruf, said that 50% of global baled seaweed supply originates from Indonesia.

Even more toxins were added to the environment:
The Australian Marine Oil Spill Centre began mobilizing aircraft and equipment on 21 August 2009. On 23 August 2009, a Hercules C-130 aircraft sprayed 10,000 litres of chemical dispersant (Corexit) onto parts of the slick, with ongoing aerial spraying with dispersants being the primary early response to the spill.

Tanoni believe all waters of NTT and East Timor have been contaminated with the Montara oil spill dispersant Corexit 9500 and which has been almost three years without being followed by a scientific study that should be transparent. The use of hazardous substances to sink the oil by Australia, and Indonesia has been detrimental to the people and as usual, the victims are all marine Timorese and the fishermen who depend on the sea.

At the time, a second leak from the Chinese-owned Sinopec operation, about 50 kilometres north-west of Montara, had started many weeks previous.

Who pays?
“Many of the villages on the south-facing coasts of Timor and Rote are extremely poor and remote, with few or no paved roads and a poor communications, making it hard to confirm Indonesian media reports,” Senator Siewert said.

An inquiry found that the immediate source of the blowout, was the failure of the primary well control barrier, a cemented shoe casing, and that the causes of the spill were systemic. Not one well control barrier on the H1 Well had complied with the company’s own standards; the cement casing had not been pressure-tested, despite major problems in installing it; and only one of the two required secondary well barriers was ever installed. Despite being advised of this highly dangerous situation, PTTEP ordered drilling to proceed. None of PTTEP’s five wells at the Montara oilfield had proper safety controls.

Timor Sea FLNG – Who’s Counting The Royalties?
Billed as the world’s largest LNG project, Gorgon has Chevron as the operator with ExxonMobil and Shell as minority partners.
http://www.worldoil.com/June-2011-With-extensive-offshore-coal-seam-and-shale-gas-resources-Australia-is-poised-to-become-a-leading-LNG-supplier-to-Asia-Pacific-markets.html

The project will utilize a subsea gathering system to develop the greater Gorgon-area gas fields. Is it any wonder, the government of Timor Leste, which opposes the FLNG concept and instead wants the gas piped across the Timor trench to an LNG plant on the island nation’s southwest coast. The country is entitled to 20% of the gas that would be developed.

California is going to have to consider entirely new ocean protections in the era of frac.

* * *

Between 2000 and 2011, more than 130,000,000 fish were “salvaged” in the massive state and federal pumps diverting water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, according to a white paper written by Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). Considering that recent studies point out that 5 to 10 times more fish are lost than salvaged, the actual number of fish lost could be 1.3 billion or higher. (http://www.restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CSPA-BDCP-Fish-Screens-Revised.pdf) 

San Joaquin River below Friant Dam. Photo by Dan Bacher. 

Water Board must restore San Joaquin River flows!

by Dan Bacher

Tuesday, March 20 was a busy day for Restore the Delta (RTD), a coalition opposed to the Brown administration’s rush to construct massive peripheral tunnels to divert millions of acre-feet of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to corporate agribusiness, oil companies and Southern California developers.

Representatives of the group, along with fishermen, environmentalists, and other Delta advocates, testified at both a public meeting in West Sacramento to discuss the first three chapters of revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan proposal and a State Water Resources Control Board (SWRB) meeting in Sacramento hearing regarding San Joaquin River flows.

Restore the Delta criticized the revised BDCP proposal as still being “fatally flawed” – and blasted the water board for presiding over years of water quality violations on the San Joaquin River and failing to increase river flows sufficiently to restore salmon and steelhead.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, told the water board public hearing in the morning, “The BDCP will simply fail to restore the estuary. The proposed plan for the San Joaquin also fails to rectify years of water quality violations in the San Joaquin River and South Delta.”

“The plan fails to balance the public trust. And it fails to protect all parties equally dependent on the health of the San Joaquin River, by giving priority status and protection to upstream users – all at the expense of water users on the lower San Joaquin River, Delta farmers, Delta residents, and Delta fisheries,” she said.

“The San Joaquin River plan does, however, ensure that water exporters do not have to give up one drop of water for river and Delta restoration,” Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla continued. “And it sets a dangerous precedent for how flow standards for the Sacramento River will be set if the twin tunnels are constructed and brought into operation.”

She also criticized language in the BDCP Administrative draft, in the water facilities and operations section.

“The language does nothing to reassure us that this project will be operated any differently than the pumps are at Tracy in the present,” she noted. “An adaptive management process for which a standard for cannot be set because agreement cannot be reached on the importance of spring and fall outflows is not a plan.”

Barrigan-Parrilla also zeroed in on the enormous cost of the canal at a time when the state is in economic crisis.

“Asking the public through higher water rates and/or taxes to pay for theses tunnels, probably the first or second most costly public works project in the history of California, without understanding in advance how they will be operated, is incomprehensible. We are told to trust the regulating agencies. Well we are all learning today how well that is working out for the San Joaquin River,” she said.

When Brown he says the tunnels will cost $14 billion, he is not giving the full cost of project. The cost will exceed $60 billion by the time financing, cost overruns, mitigation, operations and maintenance are counted. Californians will spend billions with not a drop more of water delivered to our cities and no benefits to the environment.

An economic analysis released on August 7, 2012 by Food and Water Watch and C-WIN (the California Water Impact Network) reveals that Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) customers could be on the line for $2,003 to $9,182 per customer.

Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, said the Tribe fully supports the Restore the Delta position on the the peripheral tunnels and San Joaquin River flows.

“California people must know the true effects of the Two Water Plans that will destroy the waterways and make it irreversible,” Chief Sisk said. “The filtering systems are already failing and no one is advocating for cleaning up high mountain streams, rivers, or installing adequate piping or replacing old polluting piping or rebuilding sewage plants…..all this is too expensive! It is cheaper to keep channeling contaminated water for profit.”

The meetings took place as the Brown administration appears dead set on driving Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations over the abyss of extinction.

Between 2000 and 2011, more than 130,000,000 fish were “salvaged” in the massive state and federal pumps diverting water to corporate agribusiness and southern California, according to a white paper written by Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). Considering that recent studies point out that 5 to 10 times more fish are lost than salvaged, the actual number of fish lost could be 1.3 billion or higher. (http://www.restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CSPA-BDCP-Fish-Screens-Revised.pdf)

The carnage in the pumps has impacted 42 species, including Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon, striped bass, largemouth bass American shad and threadfin shad.

Record water amounts of water were exported from the Delta under the Brown administration in 2011 – 6,520,000 acre-feet, 217,000 acre feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre feet set in 2005 under the Schwarzenegger administration. The massive diversion of water resulted in the record “salvage” of nearly 9 million splittail, a fish formerly listed under the Endangered Species Act and delisted during a political scandal under the Bush administration, and over 2 million other fish.

While fall-run Chinook salmon numbers have improved from the collapse of 2008-2009, allowing recreational and commercial fishing to resume on the California and Southern Oregon coast, the species is still in big trouble. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992 set a goal of doubling Chinook salmon and other anadromous fish species by 2002. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/07/carnage-in-the-pump

The salmon population now stands at only 20 percent of the population goal required by federal law. There was a steady decline of fish from 2003 to 2010, including a record low of 7 percent. The closest we got to meeting the salmon doubling goal was in 2002, when the index peaked at 64.33 percent of the doubling goal.

Rather than improving the dismal state of California fish populations, the construction of the peripheral tunnels would likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other species, according to agency and independent scientists. (http://www.bay.org/assets/BDCP%20EA%20Briefing%20Paper%2022912.pdf)

As Chief Sisk said, “The common people will pay for the tunnels and a few people will make millions. It will turn a once pristine waterway into a sewer pipe. It will be bad for the fish, the ocean and the people of California.”

“The Winnemem Wintu Tribe supports No Tunnels – No Shasta Dam Raise! There should be billions of dollars spent for cleaning up the rivers, not diverting them,” she concluded.

For more information, go to: http://www.restorethedelta.org.

 * * *

by Dan Bacher

Missed in the mainstream media coverage of the release of the revised Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) documents on March 14 was the alarming role the peripheral tunnels could play in increased fracking in California

The oil industry, represented by Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association and the former chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” in Southern California, is now pushing for increasing fracking for oil and natural gas in shale deposits in Kern County and coastal areas.

However, Adam Scow, the California Campaigns Director of Food and Water Watch, hasn’t missed the connection between fracking and Governor Brown’s plan to build the tunnels – and urges Californians to speak out against the corporate water grab.

“Governor Brown has proposed building two massive $50 billion water tunnels to divert the Sacramento River to corporate interests in the Central Valley,” said Scow. “Most of the water will go to large agribusiness and oil companies while taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.”

“The Westlands Water District and Kern County Water Agency import water for the biggest agribusinesses and oil fields in the Central Valley,” explained Scow. “Now they’ve gotten Governor Brown to approve a massive tunnels project to bring them even more water, which they will sell for an enormous profit. Even worse, much of this water will go to oil companies who will pollute our groundwater with fracking. Help put a stop to this corporate water grab by asking Governor Brown to protect our state’s precious water.”

Scow emphasized that most Californians would see no benefit from this massive water project, but we will be left with the $50 billion price tag. Local water projects to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and expand stormwater and rainwater systems would provide local jobs and better water security for much less.

“It’s absurd that Governor Brown wants to make us taxpayers pay to redirect the Sacramento River so that oil companies and huge agribusinesses can make even more profits,” said Scow. “Not only would we spend billions on a wasteful project that serves only to pad the pockets of corporate interests, we would be helping oil and gas companies contaminate our already precious water with fracking. Stand up and tell Governor Brown that we won’t pay the water bill for agribusinesses and oil companies.”

He urges people to speak out against the $50 billion tunnels today:
https://secure3.convio.net/fww/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=329

The drive by the oil and natural gas industry to frack California is highlighted by recent disturbing developments that reveal the enormous power of Big Oil in the state. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/26/1189970/-The-BDCP-s-Hidden-Agenda-Water-for-Fracking)

In yet one more example of the revolving door between government and huge corporations that defines politics in California now, State Senator Michael Rubio (D-Bakersfield) on February 22 suddenly announced his resignation from office in order to take a “government affairs” position at Chevron.

Rubio went to work for Chevron just two months after alleged “marine protected areas,” overseen by the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, a coastal real estate developer, a marina corporation executive and other corporate interests, went into effect on California’s North Coast.

These “marine protected areas,” created under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, wind and wave energy projects, military testing and all human impacts other than fishing and gathering.

In a big scandal largely ignored by the mainstream media, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, not only chaired the Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” on the South Coast, but also served on the task forces to create “marine reserves” on the North Coast, North Central Coast and South Coast.

“It’s clear that government and petroleum officials want to ‘frack’ in the very same areas Reheis-Boyd was appointed to oversee as a ‘guardian’ of marine habitat protection for the MLPA ‘Initiative,’” said David Gurney, independent journalist and co-chair of the Ocean Protection Coalition, in his report on the opening of new lease-sales for fracking. (http://noyonews.net/?p=8215)

“What’s becoming obvious is that Reheis-Boyd’s expedient presence on the ‘Blue Ribbon Task Force’ for the MLPAI was a ploy for the oil industry to make sure no restrictions applied against drilling or fracking in or around so-called marine protected areas,” Gurney emphasized.

The current push by the oil industry to expand fracking in California, build the Keystone XL Pipeline and eviscerate environmental laws is only possible because state officials and MLPA Initiative advocates greenwashed the key role Reheis-Boyd and the oil industry played in creating marine protected areas that don’t protect the ocean.

Reheis-Boyd apparently used her role as a state marine “protection” official to increase her network of influence in California politics to the point where the Western States Petroleum Association has become the most powerful corporate lobby in California. (http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/lawsuit-filed-against-fracking-oil-lobbyist-says-its-safe)

Now many of the same MLPA Initiative advocates who helped make Reheis-Boyd into an oil industry super star are supporting the fast-tracking of the most environmentally destructive project in California history under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

As the oil industry expands its role in California politics and environmental processes, you can bet that they are going to use every avenue they can to get more water for fracking, including taking Delta water through the planned twin tunnels.

Scow asks, “Why should we spend $50 billion to help the oil industry frack our state?”

* * *

Gray Whale and Sea Lions by Richard Ellis 

By Julie Watson

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The California Coastal Commission on Friday rejected a Navy explosives and sonar training program off the Southern California coast that critics said could harm endangered blue whales and other sea life.

Commissioners meeting in San Diego ruled unanimously that the Navy lacked enough information to back up its argument that the threat to marine mammals would be negligible.

The Navy is expected to ramp up its training in the waters over the next five years with the war in Afghanistan winding down and the military shifting its focus to the Pacific as part of the Obama administration’s national security strategy.

Commissioners said they are concerned the increased activity — especially near marine protected areas — could be detrimental for endangered mammals such as the blue, fin and beaked whales.

“The Navy needs to understand the significance of the California coast in relationship to the entire world because we’re doing research that will assist future generations,” Commissioner Martha McClure told Navy officials before her vote: “I also would like to reiterate that I believe your documentation was absolutely short.”

Alex Stone, who directs the Navy’s environmental team on the project, told commissioners that additional marine safeguards being sought by the panel would limit the training program’s scope and make it less realistic.

He said the Navy’s measures effectively protect sea life — an argument disputed by environmentalists who packed the hearing.

The panel and the Navy could now seek mediation to iron out their differences — or the Navy could simply choose to proceed with the training scheduled to begin in January, as it did after the commission requested additional protections in 2007 and 2009.

If talks fail, the commission could sue to try to force the Navy to adopt the measures, as it has done in the past but unsuccessfully.

The commissioners said they decided to reject the plan outright Friday rather than approve it conditionally because the Navy has shown it is unwilling to cooperate.

“We’ve got this stumbling block of the Navy being completely unwilling to accept any of the mitigations that our staff has proposed and there has been no explanation that is evidence-based to give us a rationale to accept your position,” Commissioner Jana Zimmer told Navy officials at the hearing.

The Navy has estimated 130 marine mammals could die and another 1,600 could suffer hearing loss from the training program, which plans annually for more than 50,000 underwater explosions and more than 10,000 hours of high-intensity sonar use.

Michael Jasny with the Natural Resources Defense Council said the Navy severely underestimates the harm in waters traversed by more than 30 endangered species. The testing area encompasses 120,000 nautical square miles of the Pacific off the Southern California coast and includes a corridor between the state and Hawaii, among other areas.

“There are no other areas in the country or possibly the world where Navy activity will be as concentrated as here in Southern California,” Jasny said. “It will be a real train wreck because this space is also shared by so many endangered species.”

The commission wants the Navy to create safety zones that would guarantee no high-intensity sonar activity near marine sanctuaries and protected areas and in spots that experience a high concentration of blue, fin and gray whales seasonally.

It also believes a kilometer from shore should also be off-limits to protect bottlenose dolphins.

After the vote, Stone said the Navy wants to reach an agreement with the state agency but stood by its arguments the commission’s measures would unnecessarily interfere with training.

“I can’t really identify any areas where I see that we would change, you know, based on the condition,” he said. “We’ve already kind of coming into this process spent a long time developing mitigation measures that we think are highly effective.”

The commission set out similar conditions to the Navy in 2007 and 2009, but the Navy refused to accept them both times.

The commission sued the Navy over the matter, leading to a preliminary injunction in 2008, though then-President George W. Bush gave an exemption for the training. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the lower court’s decision.

Jasny’s organization and three dozen others say they want the Navy to avoid important habitat for vulnerable species, including blue and fin whales, beaked whales, and migrating gray whales. They also want the Navy to not use sonar training and underwater detonations at night, when marine mammals are difficult to detect.

And they want the Navy to be required to use its own acoustic monitoring network to help detect marine mammals.

They also say that from May through October ships should slow to 10 knots in areas with baleen whales, to avoid hitting them.

Scientists say there is still much to be learned about how much sonar activity affects marine animals.

More on Gray Whales:  LINK

* * *

The Trinity River

by Dan Bacher

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels not only threatens the Chinook salmon, steelhead and other fish species of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, but also the fish and communities of the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath River.

“The project will harm Trinity County and Trinity River interests by drawing down Trinity Lake even more,” said Tom Stokely of Mt. Shasta, a former Trinity County natural resources planner now with the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN, online at http://www.c-win.org). “There is absolutely no protection for Trinity River interests from this project. Water export amounts and fishery protection flows are being put off until after the project is constructed, a ?plumbing before policy? decision to misinform the public about the true costs and benefits.”

“Cost estimates are significantly underestimated,” stated Stokely. “While Peripheral Tunnel proponents claim that the beneficiaries of the project will pay for it, they are planning on substantial subsidies from state and federal taxpayers amounting to billions more borrowed dollars. There are much more cost effective, job-producing and locally-based ways of providing water supply reliability including recycling, conservation, stormwater capture and groundwater desalination.”

You can find out more about the threat posed to the Trinity River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by the tunnels at a showing of a documentary film and slide show in Weaverville, California in April. Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment (SAFE, online at http://www.safealt.org/) is sponsoring “Over Troubled Waters”, a documentary about the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that will premiere at the Weaverville Fire Hall, 125 Bremer Street on Tuesday April 2 at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Stokely will give a slide show with a question and answer period to discuss the implications of Governor Brown?s “Peripheral Tunnels” project on Trinity County and all of California.

The documentary, “Over Troubled Waters,” by Restore the Delta (http://www.restorethedelta.org/) and the C-WIN slideshow are part of a statewide public education effort to stop the building of Peripheral Tunnels. In this visually rich documentary, Ed Begley Jr. narrates the story of how the people of the Delta are fighting to protect the region they love and to encourage saner, sustainable water policies for all the people of California

Larry Glass, President of Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment (S.A.F.E.), emphasizes, “Trinity County is a major and uncompensated source of much of this water and so Trinity should have significant say about how much water should be taken and and how that water should be used. These considerations must be important parts of this effort and the overall education of the California public before decisions are made to borrow billions for questionable projects such as the Peripheral Tunnels.”

On July 25, 2012, Governor Brown and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a controversial plan to drill two 30?-40? diameter tunnels 150 feet for 35 miles under California?s Delta to siphon northern California water to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and Southern California cities, according to Stokely. Previous plans to build a “Peripheral Canal” were defeated by two thirds of California voters in 1982 during Brown?s first tenure as governor of California.

Kayla Carpenter, a Hoopa Valley Tribe member who is pursuing her PHD in linguistics at U.C. Berkeley, attended a rally with members of the Winnemem Wintu and Pit River Tribes and other Delta advocates at the State Capitol to protest the BDCP on the same day that Governor Brown and Secretary Salazar unveiled their “water conveyance” plan. Carpenter emphasized that “the peripheral tunnels plan is tied up with Trinity River water going south.”

“The Trinity is pumped into the Sacramento via Whiskeytown Reservoir and we already have to fight hard to get water that we should be getting by law for fish,” said Carpenter. “A bigger tunnel to suck California dry isn’t going to help our fish.”

The peripheral canal or twin tunnels won’t create any new water – they will only take more water from the Delta and Trinity River, at a tremendous cost to fish, fishermen, Indian Tribes and family farmers. “If I took a cup of snow from Washington, DC back home with me and dumped it in the Delta, it would create more new water than the peripheral canal,” quipped Congressman John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).

The peripheral tunnels will likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other imperiled fish species. For more information, you can read the briefing paper by the Bay Institute and Defenders of Wildlife: http://www.bay.org/assets/BDCP%20EA%20Briefing%20Paper%2022912.pdf

The link to the event press release is: http://www.c-win.org/content/c-win-presents-documentary-over-troubled-waters-weaverville-fire-hall-april-2.html

Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment (SAFE) is dedicated to promoting healthy ecosystems through education, community involvement, organizing, demonstrations, activism and legal remedies. For more information, go to: http://www.safealt.org/

The California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) promotes the equitable and environmental use of California’s water, including instream uses, through research, planning, public education, and litigation. For more information, go to: http://www.c-win.org

* * *

The OPC submitted the following letter in support of National Marine Sanctuary expansion.

There is still time to submit your own comments (today, March 1st, until 11:59 P.M. E.S.T.).

For details, go to: http://cordellbank.noaa.gov/news/expansion.html

<————>

The Ocean Protection Coalition (OPC) is a grassroots nonprofit organization that for over 35 years has opposed offshore oil and gas development on the Northern California coast.  We have voted  in unanimous support for the expansion of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Banks National Marine Sanctuaries to the 39th parallel, as outlined in  S. 179 and H.R. 192.

As cited in numerous supporting documents, the biologically rich Point Arena upwelling sustains a tremendous abundance of marine life that is protected in the existing Cordell Banks and Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuaries.  But these upwellings do not center just around the 39th parallel, that is the northern boundary of the proposed expansions.  Rather, the pristine, nutrient rich upwellings occur all along the entire Northern California coast.  For this reason, the OPC supports expanding the Sanctuary system to at least the Oregon border, with consideration to include the entire west coast of the continental United States, up to and including the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary that extends to the Canadian border.

Northern Californians have worked hard and sacrificed much to protect wildlife habitat and restore fisheries in our coastal ecosystem.  We appreciate the adoption and expansion of the marine sanctuaries as an opportunity to engage in sound practices of human interaction with the natural world, and that these expansions will help to once and for all prohibit offshore oil and gas exploration or drilling along the Northern California coast.

Signed,

Members of the Ocean Protection Coalition,  Fort Bragg, California

* * *

As some speculated all along, it seems the closing of the North Coast ocean in so-called “Marine Protected Areas” – that purposely do not protect from oil exploration/drilling – may have involved back-room deals that also gave southern California the north state’s water resources.  More on this story from environmental reporter Dan Bacher:

Monterey/West Valley and South Coast Natural Gas Shale Deposits