2014 ndi – Pre Camp Natural Gas Negative



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Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its natural gas development in the outer continental shelf if and only if the industry agrees to a full environmental impact statement which allows for meaningful consideration of site-specific issues at the leasing, exploration, and development stages. Any necessary modifications will be made prior to implementation of the plan.

Status quo categorical exemptions allow for offshore drilling to circumvent effective NEPA review – commitment to meaningful review is necessary to prevent devastating harm.


Hull-LLM University of Florida, 2011 29 UCLA J. Envtl. L. & Pol'y 1 ARTICLE: Crude Injustice in the Gulf: Why Categorical Exclusions for Deepwater Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico Are Inconsistent with U.S. and International Ocean Law and Policy

Given its resources, refining activity, and increasing vessel traffic, the Gulf region is uniquely vulnerable to oil spills. Not surprisingly, more oils spills have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico than in any other area of the U.S. 102 Although the total number [*18] of oil spills has declined over the last several decades, the risk of offshore spills remains high. 103 Between 1981 and 2001, no oil spill over 1,000 barrels occurred from federally regulated offshore facilities. 104 Since 2002, there have been at least seven oil spills over 1,000 barrels from offshore facilities in federal waters. 105 This is problematic from an environmental perspective, but it is also troubling because the overall decline in spills has also led to a dangerous shortage of personnel knowledgeable in managing spill clean-up operations, particularly large spills. 106 The decline in oil spills has also served as disincentive to invest in response technology sufficient to address a catastrophic oil spill like the one that actually occurred. As the DWH response revealed, the industry simply did not have the technology or knowledge base to immediately regain control of the well. Attempt after attempt failed, and in the process millions of gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf environment. Another accident like DWH could happen again. Today, more than 27,000 oil wells and over 1,000 oil rigs sit abandoned in the Gulf without proper checks to discover and control leaks. 107 IV. Nepa and Offshore Oil Production Deepwater drilling is subject to environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). However, current regulatory practices allow agencies to categorically [*19] exclude certain aspects of proposed activities, such as BP's exploration plan, from environmental review. 108 As a result, such plans never receive the meaningful environmental review necessary to protect the ocean environment from harm associated with the activities. NEPA is considered the cornerstone of U.S. environmental law. 109 Its provisions reflect a national environmental policy that requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into the decision making processes before taking action. 110 Substantively, NEPA requires federal agencies to "use all practical means" consistent with national policy to allow Americans to "attain the widest range of beneficial use of the environment without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended consequences." 111 Procedurally, NEPA requires federal agencies to take a "hard look" at proposals before acting to reduce, mitigate or eliminate harm to the environment whenever possible and to disclose publicly the details of proposed agency projects or actions and their likely environmental impacts. 112 Categorical exclusions circumvent this valuable process by denying the public the opportunity to provide meaningful comment on certain activities that may have a detrimental impact to the environment. Moreover, in a tiered review process like the one used for offshore oil leases, categorical exclusions elevate expediency over meaningful environmental review.

The counterplan’s specific mechanism and genuine nature is key to resolve these issues.


Murchison, 2011 (Kenneth, B.A., Louisiana Polytechnic Institute; J.D., M.A., University of Virginia; S.J.D., Harvard Law School, Professor Emeritus at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center, “ARTICLE: Beyond Compensation for Offshore Drilling Accidents: Lowering Risks, Improving Response” 30 Miss. C. L. Rev. 277)

As explained in the preceding part, environmental assessment has been the principal method that federal law has employed for minimizing the risks of offshore drilling. NEPA directs all federal agencies to assess the environmental consequences of proposed actions 125 and requires the preparation of an environmental impact statement for any proposal for a major federal action that significantly affects the quality of the human environment. 126 The Endangered Species Act requires a more particularized evaluation when a proposed federal action might affect a species that has been listed as endangered or threatened. 127 The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act provides that development plans must assess the environmental impacts of offshore drilling. 128 Unfortunately, the Minerals Management Service has applied all three statutes in ways that avoided meaningful analysis of the environmental impacts of off shore drilling. [*291] 1. National Environmental Policy Act. Since 1970, NEPA has required federal agencies to factor environmental considerations into their decision-making. The primary vehicle for forcing consideration of environmental values is the duty to prepare an environmental impact statement for all proposals for major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. 129 To determine whether a proposed action is a major federal action for which an environmental impact statement is required, Council on Environmental Quality regulations 130 ordinarily require that an agency engage in a more informal analysis called an environmental assessment. The Council on Environmental Quality regulations contain two important exceptions to the general requirements for impact statements and environmental assessments. When an agency makes a series of decisions related to the same subject, the agency does not have to repeat its environmental analysis in successive impact statements. Instead, the regulations permit "tiering" of impact statements to avoid repetition; when a prior impact statement has already considered a particular issue, tiering allows the agency to incorporate the analysis of the prior statement by reference. 131 A second exception - the categorical exclusion - allows an agency to avoid the environmental assessment if it is unnecessary. When, an agency can identify a category of actions that never have a significant effect on the environment, the agency can establish a categorical exclusion for those activities 132 so that neither an impact statement nor an environmental assessment is required. Deepwater drilling seems to be precisely the type of decision into which NEPA intended to force agencies to incorporate environmental values, and preparation of environmental impact statements slowed offshore drilling during the 1970s. 133 Unfortunately, the Minerals Management Service managed to blunt the impact of NEPA in the 1980s. By combining inappropriate use of tiering and unwarranted expansion of categorical exclusions, the Service managed to apply NEPA in a manner that maintained the form of environmental review without any meaningful substance. The Service prepared programmatic and multi-lease impact statements at levels too broad to require discussion of specific environmental harms and used those general statements as the basis for not preparing statements for individual leases. Equally important, in 1986 it expanded a categorical exclusion that allowed the basis for categorically excluding exploration and development decisions in the central and western Gulf of Mexico to proceed without impact statements or environmental assessments. 134 [*292] In 2007, the Service actually prepared two environmental impact statements that included the area where the BP Deepwater Horizon well was located: a programmatic statement on the five-year leasing plan, which included Alaska and the Pacific as well as the Gulf of Mexico, 135 and a multi-lease statement covering eleven leases in the Gulf of Mexico, 136 including the one encompassing the BP site. Given the vast areas covered by the two statements, the discussions of particular environmental concerns are not very specific as shown in a comparison of the discussion of the potential impacts on blue fin tuna and the Gulf sturgeon, two important species in the region of the BP Deepwater Horizon well. 137 When the Service evaluated the lease for the area in which the BP Deepwater Horizon well was drilled, it prepared an environmental assessment rather than an impact statement. The assessment, which did not even mention the blue fin tuna, 138 concluded that the previous impact statements adequately discussed the relevant environmental issues. The effect of that conclusion was to foreclose detailed environmental analysis at the critical leasing stage. By the time the inquiry turned to the specific location where BP prepared to drill in 10,000 feet of water to a depth more than 5,000 feet below the ocean floor, the Service did not even prepare an environmental assessment. Instead, it relied on the categorical exclusion applicable to exploration plan and development documents in the Gulf of Mexico. 139 One could certainly argue that the categorical exclusion did not apply to the BP Deepwater Horizon well by its own terms, 140 and one can only describe the [*293] available documentation of the determination of the applicability of the exclusion as cursory. 141 The more important omission, however, is systemic. By using the categorical exclusion for exploration plans in the Gulf of Mexico, 142 the agency did not seriously analyze potential environmental problems or invite comments on those problems from other federal and state agencies or the public. Following the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Regulatory Enforcement (BOEMRE) 143 - the successor to the Minerals Management Service - conducted a joint review with the Council on Environmental Quality of the NEPA policies applicable to offshore drilling. 144 Although the report stopped short of finding that the approach used by the Minerals Management Service was unlawful, it did recommend that the Bureau review its rules for the use of categorical exclusions for offshore drilling to determine whether they should be revised. 145 On the same day that the report was issued, the Bureau suspended the use of categorical exclusions for exploration plans that use subsurface blowout preventers or blowout preventers on floating facilities, 146 and the agency initiated its formal review of the use of categorical exclusions in October. 147 The solution to the inadequate NEPA assessments of the past is to reform the process to include meaningful consideration of site-specific issues at the leasing, exploration, and development stages. One can suggest at least three changes. First, the initial programmatic statement on the five-year leasing plan should primarily focus on identifying areas that should be excluded from leasing because they are especially environmentally sensitive and highlight site-specific issues that can be addressed at later stages. Second, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Regulatory Enforcement should address the site-specific issues in an impact statement for each lease rather than preparing a single statement for a large group of leases. Third, the Bureau should eliminate the use of categorical exclusions and require individualized assessment at the exploration and development stages. At a minimum, the Bureau should prepared a [*294] written environmental assessment that is circulated for comment to the public and to federal and state agencies with environmental expertise. 148 Obviously, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Regulatory Enforcement can implement these requirements by changing its practices. To make the changes permanent, Congress should amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to require them. Some might criticize the NEPA proposals as paperwork requirements that will have no impact on minimizing future oil spills because the NEPA reviews are unlikely to stop leasing, exploration, or development. That view, however, is overly cynical. Replacing a categorical exclusion with an environmental assessment circulated to the public and to environmental agencies will at least make egregious environmental errors less likely. Similarly, an environmental assessment or an impact statement does not have to stop offshore drilling to be effective. Even if drilling proceeds, careful assessment can improve environmental safeguards and suggest alternatives that lessen the environmental impact or ways to minimize environmental impacts that cannot be avoided. 149

That commitment spills over globally – the impact is resource wars – also gets lobbies on board to avoid politics


Purvis, 2003 (Nigel, Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institute, “Greening U.S. Foreign Aid through the Millennium Challenge Account” Brookings Institute, June, http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2003/06/energy-purvis)

Third, the global environment affects the U.S. economy. Dealing with largely preventable threats posed by foreign invasive species, such as the super-weed kudzu, costs the U.S. economy several hundred million dollars a year. Dealing with pollution along the U.S.-Mexico border is also costly. In contrast, encouraging other countries to fight environmental ills helps promote U.S. exports as American firms produce some of the most advanced environmentally friendly technology products. Fourth, avoiding international environmental tensions, such as regional conflicts over scarce water in the Middle East and Africa, can contribute to regional stability and enhance our security interests. Finally, nature also has an important independent value for most Americans, who value it the way they value freedom—for its own sake. Human welfare and happiness depend on many nonmonetary intangibles, including a clean environment. Sustainable Development The strong U.S. interest in global environmental protection has meant that U.S. and international development efforts have been organized for more than a decade around the principle of 'sustainable development,' not merely economic growth. While the concept can be difficult to apply in practice and has stirred partisan debate at home, it means roughly meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the needs of future generations. Because progress against poverty must be sustainable, economic development must be environmentally sustainable. To avoid long-term or irreversible environmental damage, economic growth and environmental protection must be pursued simultaneously. This concept has been enshrined in international thinking on development since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The recent United Nations Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious set of anti-poverty objectives, highlight the centrality of sustainable development and include an extensive set of environmental benchmarks. Despite the fact that President Bush's MCA announcement came on the eve of a major international gathering in Monterrey, Mexico, dedicated to advancing those goals, the administration?s proposal neither acknowledges sustainable development nor the importance of environmental progress. The international consensus around the goal of sustainable development means that developing countries would welcome environmental aid. They lag behind industrialized nations in the adoption of modern energy technologies and are eager to close the gap. Many poor nations have created national parks but lack the capacity to keep away illegal squatters, miners, farmers, poachers, and loggers. Encouraging more action on issues affecting poverty and the environment was the central theme of the World Summit on Sustainable Development last year in Johannesburg, South Africa. The signal from the international community could not be clearer: sustainable development, including its environmental dimension, is the global priority. The international emphasis placed on environmental protection is primarily a result of U.S. leadership. The longstanding, bipartisan foreign policy of the United States maintains that economic growth and environmental protection must proceed in tandem. Not only does the United States pursue international environmental protection directly through treaties, trade negotiations, and foreign assistance, but it ensures that its commercial objectives do not produce unintended ecological consequences. Moreover, U.S. policymakers have demonstrated, through domestic policies, that sustained progress on the environment actually contributes to prosperity. For example, air and water have become substantially cleaner over the past two decades, even as the United States has led the developed world in economic growth. Reorienting the MCA Soon Congress will take up the president's MCA proposal with a view to enacting initial authorizing legislation that will define the purpose, scope, and modalities of this new U.S. approach to development. Lawmakers and the administration should use this opportunity to ensure that the MCA builds on U.S. and international sustainable development efforts. In practical terms, this will require the following changes to the administration's initial MCA proposal: Environmental Mandate The central objective of the MCA should be promoting sustainable development rather than economic growth alone. Not only would this bring the MCA in line with widely accepted development policy, but it also would make the MCA consistent with the goals of existing U.S. foreign affairs and development agencies. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and the Export-Import Bank of the United States, for example, have explicit environmental and sustainable development statutory mandates. To help build a culture that values environmental protection, the MCA?s implementing agency should have a statutorily established environmental advisory committee for its first two years of operation. The advisory committee would help the agency establish responsible environmental policies and procedures. Environmental Safeguards The MCA's implementing agency should be required to adopt an extensive set of procedural safeguards to ensure MCA-funded projects are environmentally sensible. It should screen projects for environmental risks and disqualify categorically certain types of environmentally damaging or socially disruptive projects, such as large-scale dams that would forcibly displace thousands of people. The new agency should conduct technical assessments of the likely environmental effects of grant proposals. The MCA program would benefit if the agency monitored its overall environmental track record and prepared annual reports on the long-term environmental consequences of its grants. While the MCA should encourage developing countries to help prepare this analysis and follow similar procedures, the MCA should be responsible for the completeness and accuracy of environmental assessments. Environmental safeguards are a well-established part of U.S. development policy. Since 1979, Executive Order 12114 has required U.S. agencies to assess the environmental effects abroad of "major federal action." Because of the executive order's limited scope, Congress has in recent years required that existing U.S. development agencies follow additional strict environmental assessment and reporting procedures. Almost all U.S. international agencies (including USAID, the EX-IM bank, and OPIC) must screen projects for environmental sensitivity, conduct rigorous assessments of possible environmental consequences, and monitor environmental results. Executive Orders also extend similar requirements to some other U.S. commercial agencies, such as the U.S. Trade Representative. These assessments are performed by the U.S. agencies themselves based in part on information submitted by recipient nations, and they include opportunities for public comment. Importantly, both the environmental and business communities support these procedures. While some environmental organizations believe U.S. environmental assessments should be strengthened, they appreciate that these procedures make government decisions more transparent and participatory. The business community has found that government-sponsored environmental reviews can be commercially timely and add legitimacy to approved projects, which helps win public acceptance. Like existing environmental review processes in OPIC and elsewhere, great attention should be paid to making the MCA?s environmental screening and assessment procedures as simple and streamlined as possible. Given the success of past efforts, this would not be overly difficult. Failing to require the MCA's implementing agency to adopt a rigorous environmental assessment policy not only would depart from general U.S. practice but it would also undermine longstanding, bipartisan efforts by the United States to convince other countries and multilateral institutions to conduct their own environmental assessments. The United States has led global efforts to strengthen the World Bank Group's already extensive environmental assessment procedures. It has also for years urged industrialized countries to require their export credit agencies to adopt environmental criteria similar to those already used by OPIC and the EX-IM bank. As early as 1992, for example, the United States successfully negotiated a common donor statement of the importance of assessing the environmental impact of foreign assistance programs. Allowing U.S. foreign aid to be blind to the environment now would undercut the progress we have made internationally to coordinate donor efforts and ensure a level international playing field for U.S. companies.


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