Williamsburg conference goes slowly on offshore drilling

WILLIAMSBURG

If anyone was worried that oil and gas drilling will occur hastily off the Virginia coast without adequate study or deliberation, they should have been at the Williamsburg Woodlands Conference Center on Wednesday.

Nearly 100 scientists and officials from across the country crowded into a meeting hall to compare notes and recommend research on the effects of allowing energy companies to again seek fossil fuels on the Outer Continental Shelf of the Atlantic Ocean after a two-decade hiatus.

They learned that government leases for exploration and drilling off the coast would be sold in 2011 at the earliest, and that it would likely take five to 10 years more to produce any oil or natural gas. That's assuming that commercially viable reserves are found and that companies are willing to spend years and invest millions to go after them.

The federal Minerals Management Service called the two-day workshop, which ends today. The service announced that three major studies will be pursued and funded with nearly $2 million in taxpayer money.

The studies, said Jim Cimato, chief of environmental science with the management service, will focus on oceanographic patterns in a proposed exploration zone at least 50 miles off the coast; marine archaeology within the same, cone-shaped area; and infrastructure needs for finding and extracting reserves and bringing them to shore.

"If we're really serious about oil and gas in the mid-Atlantic, we need to do this research," Cimato said.

Plenty is known about the area.

It is a crossroads for endangered whales, including the humpback, sperm and North Atlantic right whale, which has a dangerous habit of colliding with ships and dying.

"Don't ask me why they don't just get out of the way, but they don't," said Scott Krauss, a researcher with the New England Aquarium.

Bluefin tuna - the kind that can grow into enormous sushi-bar treasures - tend to feed on smaller fish in nearby waters. Dolphins are abundant there, and sea turtles stroll through the exploration area. Virginia's richest seafood resource, the scallop, can be found in the zone.

Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said the waters in question tend to swirl and loop on each other, out to the edges of the Gulf Stream.

Because this mixing action influences ocean trends off Maryland and North Carolina, any scientific analysis should be expanded to include potential impacts on these states, too, Atkinson said.

"This is not just a Virginia coastal issue," he said.

The workshop also featured a presentation from Kent Satterlee, an executive with Shell Exploration and Production Co., a branch of Shell Oil.

Satterlee drew gasps from the crowd when he showed a complicated flow chart describing the number of regulatory steps involved with offshore exploration and drilling.

"Simple stuff, right?" he said with a grin.

Initial exploratory work relies on air guns, which are fired underwater. The sound waves bounce off the ocean bottom, and listening devices aboard research ships can help determine where "hydrocarbon traps" might be located, Satterlee sai d.

He said drilling platforms are highly regulated, not only for air emissions but for discharges of oil, grease, drilling fluids, sanitary wastes and waste mud.

One of the biggest concerns expressed by environmentalists is the industrial development of the Virginia coast to handle raw products coming to shore from drilling platforms.

In addressing this argument, Satterlee said energy companies might instead build underwater pipelines to refineries in New Jersey, bypassing the Virginia coast altogether.

He also noted recent advancements in "floating production and storage facilities" - basically, big ships that hold raw oil or natural gas and later transport the resources directly to a refinery or offloading port nearby.

The comments and ideas generated during the Williamsburg workshop will be compiled in a public report. The Minerals Management Service will consult that report in considering requirements of companies seeking to explore offshore.

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science will help craft the report and will post it on its Web site.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com