The Obama administration announced today, Friday July 18, 2014, that they would reopen the Eastern Seaboard, from Delaware to Florida, for seismic surveys that will test for oil so that companies can find sites to do offshore drilling. This news has drawn the ire of environmentalists and people who live off of fishing and seaside tourist attractions, fearing that it will cause damage.
Offshore drilling is a highly dangerous method of securing oil from deep deposits in the earth. One of the worst oil spills ever, the 2010 BP oil spill at Deepwater Horizons, was attributed to offshore oil drilling in unsafe conditions with little government regulation.
Seismic testing causes noise pollution which can be harmful to marine life. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the testing, acknowledging that thousands of animals will be put in danger by the testing.
The Obama administration has approved this testing in preparation for 2018, when federal limits on offshore oil drilling will expire. This way companies can do research now so they will be ready to apply for drilling spots in 2018.
Acting BOEM director Walter Cruickshank said in a statement that, "The bureau's decision reflects a carefully analyzed and balanced approach that will allow us to increase our understanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments."
Seismic testing is widely in use in spots where offshore oil testing is occurring regularly, like the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and other spots around the world. They use sound to capture an image which will tell where oil deposits lay.
Andy Radford, an engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, said, "It's like a sonogram of the Earth. You can't see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the Earth that might hold oil and gas."
Much of the water where testing is to be done is in far-out water, federally-owned, beyond state law and state drilling bans. Offshore oil drilling in the area off the coastline from Florida to Delaware could generate up to $195 billion in income from 2017 to 2035, according to oil lobbyists, which would account for an extra $23.5 billion a year in taxes.
Still, the damaging effects on marine wildlife has yet to be determined, and has the potential to be disastrous on these fragile ecosystems. Whales and dolphins, for example, use finely-tuned audio signals to navigate waters, communicate with each other, and find food. If the sonic testing leaves them deaf, or with damaged hearing, that could be very bad for the species.
Katie Zimmerman, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League in Charleston, South Carolina, said, "Once they can't hear -- and that's the risk that comes with seismic testing -- they are pretty much done for."
