I am stepping outside of our remit to send only ocean-specific issues in our newsletters to invite you to engage in Participatory Democracy. In these extraordinary times most of us living beings are looking on with horror as the litany…
Category: Fossil Fuel Industry
The way ahead
For those of you “just waiting for the other shoe to drop” on the “election collusion” inquiry with the hopes that it will somehow stop – or at least slow down the rapacious industrial policies being thrown at us by…
All a matter of perspective
I’ve just finished up a week in Pittsburgh, PA at an Acoustics Society conference. Because sound and acoustics intersect so many fields, Society meetings are some of the most diverse gatherings of disciplines under one roof – with sessions on…
Report from Washington D.C.
Last week found the OCR office and staff (Gwynn and myself) with a few hundred other ocean conservationists and activists out in Washington DC attending the fifth annual Blue Vision Summit. This convening has been growing in stature since its…
Five Years Hence – BP’s impact on the future of energy
Five years ago today a un-controlled gas “kick” blew apart a sub-standard well installation that began what is to this point the largest single fossil fuel disaster in human history (if you exclude the 2005 US Energy Policy Act). From…
BOEM’s eggs are hatching chickens
Back in August of 2014 the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) attempted to mitigate public outrage for a hastily made decision on opening up the US Atlantic continental shelf to seismic surveys by publishing an unsubstantiated puff piece on…
OCR Comments on the 5 year Offshore oil and gas leasing proposal
I’ve just filed our comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s 2017-2022 Five Year Outer Continental Shelf energy leasing plan. While wind and tidal energy would need leases as well, this plan is singularly focused on oil and gas…
Some big noise going on down below
Advancing technologies in offshore oil and gas extraction are allowing fossil fuel extractors to venture into ever deeper waters, and drill even deeper wells. Extraction and production operations are happening at water depths of up to two miles, and bore-hole…
Perfunctory documents still haunting offshore regulations?
The initial post-disaster review of the contingency plans for the BP-Macondo operations revealed that the plans were a pile of boilerplate used as a proxy for the required papers. This was made clear to the public when the documents included…
Big noises going on out yonder
Dynamically stabilized oil drilling and production platform. With much of the offshore noise attention being focused on seismic airgun surveys, other aspects of the fossil fuel industry’s contribution to ocean noise pollution may be sneaking by our review –…