An oil rig seen in 2008 off the California coast where endangered blue whales were spotted. A new report from the Interior Department fueled the debate over drilling in the Atlantic, where endangered North Atlantic right whales live. (David McNew/Getty Images)
Drilling for oil and gas off the Atlantic coast? A report released yesterday from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moves us one step closer.
The BOEM was asked to appraise the environmental impact of what it described as “large-scale geological and geophysical surveys” in the mid- and south-Atlantic. The review found most cumulative impacts of the surveying to be “negligible” or “minor,” opening up the prospect for offshore drilling in the area.
Like most proposals to begin oil and gas exploration somewhere new, this one has sparked heated debate. This past August, conservationists and some members of congress were calling into question the search technique of seismic airguns, according to The Washington Post. Seismic airguns are towed behind ships, shooting off blasts repeatedly at continuous intervals. “The dynamite-like blasts occur every 10 seconds, for days to weeks at a time,” notes a press release from the non-profit Oceana.
The effects of these booms aren’t yet known — and that’s partly why conservation groups are against it. “The government itself expects this testing to possibly injure 138,500 marine mammals like dolphins and whales along the East Coast,” Oceana writes. One of those species includes the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which, according to the IUCN has just 350 individuals left.
In September, Oceana delivered a petition 100,000-signatures strong to the BOEM trying to prevent employing these airguns. And just last week, more than 100 scientists wrote to the Obama Administration to urge the use of the latest and best scientific data to determine how these surveys might negatively influence marine mammals.
Those who want the exploration allowed, oil and gas companies on the other side of the debate, say it could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, according to The New York Times, and state there’s no proof that this technique would kill or injure these animals. What’s still unknown is how the sounds could affect their behavior in the long-term.
President Obama, in 2010, allowed for study of 330,000 square miles of the Atlantic — an area with the potential to produce billions of barrels of oil. However, leasing is banned there until 2017.
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Humpback whale calf Beethoven, 2006. (Bryant Austin/Studio Cosmos)