Oil companies pursue drilling along coast

CHARLESTON -- Seven companies have already applied for permits to explore for oil and natural gas along all or part of the Southeast coast. All of them want to look off South Carolina.

They would detonate compressed air guns dragged behind ships, creating a series of seismic blasts in order to read the "echo" beneath the sea floor.

To explore the area off South Carolina alone could cost a company some $4 million or more.

That's why two public hearings will be held in Charleston on April 27 by the federal Minerals Management Service. The idea that potential supplies off the coast aren't large enough to interest energy companies doesn't mean nobody wants to test the water. Oil companies don't usually do the early surveys, geophysical exploration companies do. Then they sell the data they find.

Whether the supplies or the onshore infrastructure is large enough to make offshore drilling profitable usually doesn't get decided until after a few test wells have been drilled.

"You wouldn't want to preclude anything until you had a better understanding" of the subsurface geology, said Walt Rosenbusch, projects and issues vice president of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors.

That's enough to alarm environmentalists. The seismic blasts would be the latest in an intensifying din along a coast inhabited by the critically endangered right whale, among other species of concern.

A series of blasts from a single compressed air gun can blank out the calls of whales and other marine mammal over an area bigger than New Mexico, said Michael Jasny, of the environmental advocate Natural Resources Defence Council.

The animals call to do everything from navigate to feed and mate.

Studies also have shown commercial fish catches drop 40-80 percent during seismic exploration, he said.

"There's an environmental impact. There's also an economic impact," Jasny said.

The federal "scoping meetings" are two of 13 being held along the Southeast coast to get public comments for an environmental impact statement, a preliminary step to deciding whether mitigation and monitoring will be ordered to take place during the surveys. Federal regulations call for companies to share their findings with Minerals Management Service, which makes no bones about its interest.

"It has been more than 25 years since geological and geophysical studies were conducted off the Atlantic coast. This data will enhance, update and supplement information to support future MMS planning decisions for both renewable and conventional energy development," the minerals service news release said.

The Obama administration in March lifted a long-standing ban on new offshore drilling. The S.C. legislature last year gave the go-ahead for drilling off the coast.

The politically charged issue has South Carolinians divided on whether the potential for new energy reserves and revenue outweighs the risks to an $18 billion tourism industry, fishing and other interests.

Derb Carter, Southern Environmental Law Center director, said the seismic blasts would disrupt marine life, and the exploration permits would open the way for drilling.

"The risk and impacts of drilling off the South Atlantic coast are too great and conflict with both the environmental conditions and the economy," he said.

S.C. Sen. Paul Campbell, R-Goose Creek, who championed the state bill, said he hasn't seen permanent environmental consequences from seismic work in the Gulf of Mexico. "If it's a temporary consequence, that's one thing we've got to live with," he said.