The Need for Greater Interagency Consultation

Under OCSLA, it is up to the Secretary of the Interior to choose the proper balance between environmental protection and resource development. In making leasing decisions, the Secretary is required to solicit and consider suggestions from any interested agency, but he or she is not required to respond to the comments or accord them any particular weight. Similar issues arise at the individual lease sale stage and at the development and production plan stage. As a result, NOAA—the nation's ocean agency with the most expertise in marine science and the management of living marine resources—effectively has the same limited role as the general public in the decisions on selecting where and when to lease portions of the OCS. A more robust and formal interagency consultation process is needed—with the goal of identifying precise areas that should be excluded from lease sales because of their high ecological importance or sensitivity. In addition to NOAA, other federal agencies that should be involved include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and EPA.

Strengthened interagency coordination on offshore oil and gas activities will also be important in implementing the final recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. These recommendations, adopted by President Obama by Executive Order on July 19, 2010, mandate a new national ocean policy that includes a framework for coastal

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¶and marine spatial planning, as well as a comprehensive, adaptive, integrated, transparent, ecosystem- and science-based process for analyzing current and anticipated uses of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes areas.11 Coastal and marine spatial planning applies a multi- sector approach in an effort to simultaneously reduce user conflicts and environmental impacts associated with ocean and coastal activities. Integrating five-year leasing plans and associated leasing decisions with the coastal and marine spatial planning process will be an important step toward assuring the sustainable use of ocean and coastal ecosystems. It could also reduce uncertainty for industry and provide greater predictability for potential users of different areas.

¶To ensure that offshore oil and gas development and production proceed in ways that minimize adverse impacts to the natural and human environment, decisions about these activities must be grounded in strong science. With respect to funding the necessary science, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires Interior to study the "assessment and management of environmental impacts on the outer Continental Shelf and coastal areas that might be affected by oil and gas or other mineral developments. . . ."12 Initiated in 1973, funding for the Environmental Studies Program at Interior peaked in 1976 at roughly $55 million, but had fallen to less than $20 million during most of the 1990s and 2000s. It was only recently increased to approximately $30 million.13

¶Future research must be conducted in a systematic way that strategically enhances understanding of the impacts of oil and gas activities and provides regulators with the timely and scale-appropriate information required for sound decisions. Long-term studies that provide critical scientific information on OCS frontier or lesser known areas,* or systematic efforts to fill data gaps in areas with existing oil and gas activity, can help ensure that the selection of new leasing areas is informed by a full understanding of potential impacts on important ecological resources. In frontier areas, it will be important to collect data on prevailing environmental conditions on a broad geographic scale, not just at individual lease sites. Additionally, post-development ecological monitoring is critical to understanding the impacts of oil and gas activities and to facilitate an adaptive approach to environmental management. Expanded coordination and cooperation on scientific research efforts with NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other agencies with relevant expertise can improve the quality of science available for OCS decision-making. Much of this research will also be relevant to other offshore activities, including the development of offshore wind resources.

¶Recommendations B2: The Department of the Interior should reduce risk to the environment from OCS oil and gas activities by strengthening science and interagency consultations in the OCS oil and gas decision-making process.

The term "frontier areas" include areas of the OCS that either have never been leased, or have not been leased in many years. It includes the Arctic (Beaufort and Chukchi Seas) and the Atlantic and portions of the Pacific.

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B3: Congress, by enacting legislation, and the Department of the Interior, through its lease provision, should require the oil and gas industry to pay fees that support environmental science and regulatory review related to OCS oil and gas activities to enable cooperating agencies to carry out these responsibilities. (See Recommendation G2.)

¶Several actions are needed to implement these recommendations:

Congress should amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to provide NOAA with a formal consultative role during the development of five-year lease plan and lease sale stages. Consultation should occur no later than 60 days in advance of final Department of the Interior decisions on lease plans and sales. Specifically, NOAA should provide comments and recommendations concerning specific geographic areas that should be excluded from the leasing program or treated in a specific manner due to their ecological sensitivity or for other reasons relevant to NOAA's ocean and coastal science expertise. Interior must adopt NOAA's recommendations unless the Department determines that doing so would be inconsistent with important national policy interests. Moreover, Interior must publish in writing its rationale for rejecting NOAA's recommendation.

The Department of Energy, NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other interested agencies should establish a joint research program to systematically collect critical scientific data, fill research gaps, and provide comprehensive, ecosystem-based scientific reviews of OCS areas that are currently or will likely be open for oil and gas leasing, and for offshore areas being considered for the siting of sources of renewable energy such as wind power. This program should build on existing data; should aim to supplement data collected from individual lease sites by industry to develop information for broader geographic areas; and should engage the non-federal scientific community through such mechanisms as the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. The research should outline and develop the necessary data for: (1) decision-making related to future leasing, exploration, and development; (2) measuring and monitoring impacts on ecological resources; and (3) providing necessary data for natural resource damage assessment should an oil spill occur.

The National Academy of Sciences should regularly evaluate the government's studies program in this area, preferably at five-year intervals.

Together with NOAA, the new division of environmental science under the direction of the Chief Scientist in the Office of Leasing and Environmental Science should develop an environmental monitoring program or set of protocols to be implemented by oil and gas companies at lease sites once exploration and development and production activities begin. Areas of ecological interest and areas where data gaps exist should be targeted for monitoring programs. In addition, monitoring should be conducted in a way that is independently verifiable and allows for comparisons across individual sites. Companies should provide all monitoring data to the federal government.

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NOAA and other federal agencies with appropriate expertise should be encouraged to act as cooperating agencies in NEPA reviews of offshore energy production activities, including exploration and development plans and drilling permit applications. Federal agencies that submit comments to Interior as part of a NEPA process should receive a written response indicating how the information was applied and if it was not included, why it was not included.

Strengthening Oil Spill Response, Planning, and

¶Capacity

¶Just as the events of April 20, 2010 exposed a regulatory regime that had not kept up with the industry it was responsible for overseeing, the events that unfolded in subsequent weeks and months made it dismayingly clear that neither BP nor the federal government was prepared to deal with a spill of the magnitude and complexity of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. This section discusses the Commission's recommendations in the area of oil spill response and planning. Broadly speaking they address three critical issues or gaps in the government's existing response capacity: (1) the failure to plan effectively for a large-scale, difficult-to-contain spill in the deepwater environment or potentially in the Arctic; (2) the difficulty of coordinating with state and local government officials to deliver an effective response; and (3) a lack of information and understanding concerning the efficacy of specific response measures, such as dispersants and berms.