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Sierra Club Grassroots Email Express
June 26, 2006
Volume 4 No. 9
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Sierra Club Grassroots Email Express
June 26, 2006
Volume 4 No. 9
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DRILLING PROPONENTS PUT AMERICA'S COASTS & FISHING INDUSTRY AT RISK IN CONGRESSIONAL PUSH THIS WEEK

Ask Maine's Representatives to Oppose HR 4761, the so-called "Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act

THE ISSUE

It's summertime, and across the country families are flocking to the coast for beach vacations and fishing trips. Our coasts and marine waters provide the economic lifeblood for thousands of tourism and fishing communities, providing billions of dollars of economic activity and millions of jobs. In addition to being top vacation destinations, our coasts are sanctuary for fish and wildlife and a critical part of America's "sea to shining sea" natural heritage.

 

This is especially true in Maine, with its beautiful vast coastlines and the rich fisheries of Georges Bank.

 

But the oil and gas industry - enjoying record profits while Americans pay the price at the gas pump - has teamed up with agricultural and manufacturing lobbyists and allies in Congress to weaken decades of coastal protections and allow offshore drilling in protected waters.

 

Offshore drilling is not the answer to our energy needs and would only industrialize and jeopardize our fragile coasts.

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO

CALL MAINE'S REPRESENTATIVES TOM ALLEN AND MIKE MICHAUD AND ASK THEM TO OPPOSE HR 4761: the so-called "Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act"

 

Representative Tom Allen

Phone: (202) 225-6116

Maine Phone: (207) 774-5019

Fax: (202) 225-5590 (fax)

 

Representative Mike Michaud

Phone: (202) 225-6306

Maine Phone: (207) 942-6935

Fax: (202) 225-2943

 

HR 4761: MORE GIVEAWAYS TO BIG OIL

 

Offshore oil and gas drilling is the slowest, dirtiest and most expensive way to meet our energy needs.  Opening our coasts to destructive drilling would do little to lower prices or make us more energy independent, but it would threaten our beaches with pollution and potential oil spills and destroy billion-dollar tourism and fishing industries.     

 

BACKGROUND:

1. Gives away our coast to Big Oil:

The House recently renewed the bipartisan congressional moratorium that has long protected America's coastal-dependent economies, but under HR 4761 this protection would be immediately rescinded, nationwide.  The Presidential Deferrals on new offshore leasing first put in place by former President George Herbert Walker Bush would be reversed right away.  Coastal states would instead be continually forced to meet unrealistic time deadlines and complex procedures to regain ongoing coastal protection near their most sensitive shorelines in order to protect their coastal economies.

 

2. Gives away billions of federal dollars - It's a Budget Buster:

The Bush Administration has stated, in a letter to Chairman Pombo from MMS Director Johnnie Burton dated June 21, 2006, that "the Administration opposes certain aspects of the revenue sharing provisions of HR 4761.  Our preliminary and very rough estimates indicated that these provisions, if unchanged, would result in a decline of $69 billion of retained federal royalties over 15 years.  This diversion would have significant impacts on the federal debt."  And in spite of the growing scandal over uncollected oil and gas revenues owed to taxpayers from congressional and agency "mistakes"

in negotiating prior offshore leases, even more new royalty discounts would be provided to lessees under some of the terms of HR 4761.

 

3. Gives Big Oil major exemptions from existing US laws:

HR 4761 exempts oil and gas companies from the preparation of an environmental impact statement for individual lease sales, and instead deems the nationwide environmental impact statement for the Five-Year Outer Continental Shelf Leasing Program to be all the companies need to do to proceed with offshore leasing in controversial new areas.  Seismic airgun surveys, proven to cause damage to fisheries and marine mammals, would also be exempted from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by HR 4761.

 

4. Encourages Big Oil to leave their trash in the ocean:

HR 4761 exempts oil and gas operators from their current contractual obligations to remove their drilling rigs at the end of their useful life cycles and to restore the drilling site, and instead permits disused spent drilling rigs to be dumped in place as unproven "artificial reefs" or converted to polluting offshore aquaculture or other industrial uses.  This means that once offshore rigs are in place, they may never be removed, unlike current US requirements for abandonment and removal procedures.

 

5. Gives away our American heritage on our coasts:

America's founding fathers set a longstanding precedent for wise stewardship of our natural treasures, and Congress has continued and sustained that bipartisan tradition on our nation's most sensitive coastlines for the past twenty-five years.  HR 4761 would permanently terminate this time-honored national tradition by sacrificing these clean coastal waters, and the rich fisheries and healthy visitor-serving industries that depend on them, to Big Oil at a discount.

 

For more information contact the Chapter Office at 761-5616 or by email at maine.chapter@sierraclub.org.