Scientific Advisory Board

2003 OCS Scientific Committee Meeting Summary

April 22-24, 2003

The OCS SC of the Minerals Management Advisory Board held its annual meeting on April 22-24, 2003, in Anchorage, Alaska. On Wednesday, April 22, the SC was briefed by Mr. Robert LaBelle, Deputy Associate Director for Offshore Energy and Minerals Management, in which he provided the SC with a historical review of the OCS program. Mr. John Goll, Director of the Alaska OCS Region, provided an overview of ongoing and planned activity in Alaska and Dr. James Kendall Chief, Environmental Sciences Branch, presented an overview of the Environmental Studies Program (ESP). The SC also heard reports and updates on the OCS Policy Committee, the Mercury Subcommittee, the Alaska and Louisiana Coastal Marine Institutes (CMI), and regional priorities and information needs.

Mr. LaBelle stated that:

	the Minerals Management Service (MMS) manages 1.76 billion acres of submerged lands,
	the OCS Lands Act celebrates its 50th Anniversary,
	this year’s Safety in Seas Award was presented to Chevron Texaco,
	production from the 40 million OCS acres under lease accounts for about 30 percent of all domestic crude oil production and about 25 percent of all domestic natural gas production,
	the MMS has collected over $80 billion in revenue generated by over 66 lease sales, 8.6 billion barrels of oil, and 90 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,
	in 2002, 12 new deepwater discoveries were made - three of these were in 8,000 feet or greater water depth and 14 new deepwater projects began production, and
	MMS is working with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration which is responsible for implementing the Marine Mammal Protection Act which protects the marine mammals existing in areas where oil and gas activities are being conducted.

Mr. Goll:

	Congratulated Dr. Fred King on his being awarded the Federal Executive Association Award, which is very stiff competition and was awarded for the work he devoted to MMS’s National Environmental Policy Act documents, the Environmental Impact Statements, and other management issues that the Alaska OCS Region has encountered,
	announced that within MMS’s leasing schedule for the next 5 years, four offshore areas are being offered for sale in September, 2003 and include the Beaufort Sea, Cook Inlet, the Chukchi Sea/Hope Basin, and Norton Basin areas,
	described Northstar as being in operation for 1 year and nominally has produced about 60,000 barrels – 84 percent State and 16 percent Federal,
	stated that the McCovey Project in the Central Beaufort Sea had been a project of high interest during this past winter and that Phillips, with Chevron, used a Steel Drilling Caisson, which is a tanker converted to an ice-strengthened drilling vessel, to drill and, in February, the well was plugged and abandoned,
	stated that in Cook Inlet, the MMS is involved in the Cosmopolitan Unit that was drilled from onshore into state waters but includes two federal OCS leases, and
	reported challenges in Alaska that include oil spills and cleanup in broken ice, bowhead whale and subsistence, subsistence in general, activity avoidance, sociological effects, impact assistance, environmental justice, lack of seismic vessels, and lack of drilling vessels.

Dr. Kendall:

	Reported that for Fiscal Year 2004, the ESP budget would probably remain around $17 million,
	explained the ESP and peer review processes, and
	explained that the ESP had been subject to the President’s Budget and Performance Integration Initiative.

Dr. Larry Schmidt reported that the OCS Policy Committee met in November 2002 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and topics addressed were: global energy; methane hydrates; Oil in the Sea; Energy, the Environment and Public Opinion; Mercury Studies; and Legislative issues and regional updates. At its next meeting on May 13-14, 2003, in Alexandria, Virginia, the Committee will consider a resolution regarding long-term management of geo-science data.

Dr. William Schroeder stated the Mercury Subcommittee was formed in March after the Mobile Register began a series of articles on mercury based on analysis of mercury and fish and then mercury and humans and immediately began to try to assign blame on the oil and gas industry and the use of barium in drilling muds for lubrication during exploration. It produced a report, Mercury in the Gulf of Mexico: The Role of Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Activities, which the SC voted to accept.

Dr. Kendall presented background information on the CMI, which was started in 1989, and stated its goals are to strengthen relationships with States where OCS oil and gas activities take place, facilitate a cost-sharing partnership, address MMS and State information needs, improve information flow to local communities and the State, and provide for a way of training new students in oil and gas issues. He also stated that:

	The participants of the CMI are Louisiana State University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks,
	the Universities submit Letters of Intent (LOI) and, after review, full proposals are requested for those selected, and
	the Gulf of Mexico CMI has 91 completed or ongoing projects at a cost of $21.4 million; the Alaska CMI has 44 completed or ongoing projects at a cost of $13.5 million; and in California, there are 36 projects ongoing or completed at a cost of $6.4 million.

Dr. Vera Alexander gave a presentation on the Alaska CMI:

	The MMS provides $1 million annually to be matched one-for-one with non-federal dollars. Current project expenditures include $2,173,841 in physical oceanography; $1,320,950 in biology; $268,171 in chemical; and $125,168 for administrative costs,
	most of the research currently being conducted is in the Beaufort Sea since that is where most of the offshore oil development activity is taking place; other areas include Cook Inlet area, the Chukchi Sea, and several other projects that are less field oriented are based in Fairbanks, and
	research topics include seabird habitat, ocean circulation, whale migration, sediment chemistry, sea ice, and hydrocarbon degradation.

Dr. Larry Rouse gave a presentation on the Louisiana CMI:

	For the first Cooperative Agreement, there were 62 projects funded and the second one has had 37 projects funded for a total of about $17 million worth of research,
	studies being conducted range from the social sciences, sociology and economics, to biological and physical processes,
	research is being done on platform ecology and one particularly interesting study is the interaction between migrating birds and the offshore oil and gas platforms,
	there have been several studies on the interaction between recreational and commercial fisheries with oil and gas platforms,
	the State of Louisiana has a very significant land loss problem and one of the ways to revamp at least the barrier islands is to mine offshore sand, and
	this year 29 LOIs were submitted through the CMI and full proposals were requested for 11 of these while two others were encouraged to submit proposals that would be passed on to other sections of MMS.

Tuesday’s afternoon session was devoted to reports on regional priorities and information needs.  Mr. Barry Drucker presented for the Sand and Gravel Program followed by comments from Dr. Robert Diaz and Mr. Schmidt. Dr. Cleve Cowles presented for the Alaska OCS Region, Dr. Fred Piltz for the Pacific OCS Region, and Dr. Pat Roscigno for the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region.

Wednesday was devoted to discipline-based breakout sessions (Ecology/Biology/ Physical Oceanography, and Socioeconomics) where each discipline-based breakout group met separately with staff members from each Region and Headquarters. In each breakout session, one SC member was designated as a discussion leader and an MMS staff member was assigned to take notes. On Thursday, the leaders identified regional priorities for future environmental studies.

On Thursday, the SC heard a series of presentations from the Ninth Alaska Information Transfer Meeting which had been held in Anchorage, on March 10-12, 2003, and hosted 38 technical presentations of various disciplines. The second Information Update Meeting was held in Barrow, Alaska, on March 14, 2003, and one of the topics discussed was the concern over the Arctic Cisco and other Arctic fish in the Holgate River Drain. Both meetings were oriented to provide public dissemination of results and investigators were given the opportunity to discuss the program, its planning, and its activities.

The SC received an update on the progress of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, presented by Mr. Edward Rasmuson, a member of the Commission. As the Commission moves toward completing its mandate during 2003, a number of recommendations are beginning to take shape and be discussed openly. Mr. Rasmuson presented the draft recommendations which will be submitted for Governors review in August.

During the business session of the meeting, the SC developed the following recommendations and acknowledgments to the Director of MMS:

	The SC unanimously expressed its overall high regard for the personnel and programs of headquarters and the regions.
	The SC reiterated the importance of several issues raised last year and continue to recommend that all regions keep up-to-date with appropriate literature, including recent publications related to moratorium areas.
	Data and knowledge obtained through MMS efforts are valuable resources for current and future studies, both internal and external to MMS. To insure public accessibility of MMS-sponsored information, a comprehensive plan for archiving and accessing should be developed. An expert on database development and use should address the next SC meeting on strategies for structuring and accessing large diverse databases.
	Given the common missions of the regions and similarity of many current studies and proposed study profiles, it is important that the regions closely coordinate future studies to maximize applicability of products. A high level of coordination would also prevent unnecessary duplication of effort and maximize information gain for available resources.
	The SC recognizes MMS’s long-standing, uninterrupted archiving program with the Smithsonian Institution and encourages its continuation. Additionally, it recommends that MMS expedite discussions with the Smithsonian regarding the development of its Web Accessible System for querying such archived materials. The application of such new technologies to archived material would add a new dimension to MMS studies on par with an archival database. Museum collections are also essential to documenting and understanding biodiversity, a major international priority.
	Given the recent national emergence of programs to bring science into the classroom, MMS should investigate additional ways of turning its research products into educational and outreach materials. The SC is aware of the efforts underway by all of the MMS OCS Regions and recommends that these continue. Additionally, the recent education packages developed by the Pacific OCS Region should be used as models by the other OCS Regional Offices.
	CMI's should highlight student participation in projects and programs by providing citations for all theses and dissertations or other student products on their respective Websites. It would also be relevant to include information on current student projects.
	MMS should continually monitor the environmental data it collects, as well as advances in sampling technology and data analysis, in order to continuously refine procedures for assigning (or modifying) appropriate distances of separation between OCS activities and resources designated for protection.
	Decommissioning will likely become a major focus of MMS interest and research. In preparation for an expected research initiative, relevant literature should be summarized and the Western and Gulf of Mexico Regions should determine areas of commonality in order to avoid duplicative research programs.
	The rise of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) as a management strategy necessitates that MMS start to consider the relationship between OCS activities and MPAs.
	Given the shifting emphasis in contaminant risk assessment from body burden effects and the difficulties of interpreting body burden data, MMS in future studies should emphasize an effects based approach (such as P-450 induction or other biomarkers).
	Possible oil and gas development off the Canadian west coast near the U.S. boundary suggests the need for an MMS Pacific OCS Region liaison to U.S. and Canadian marine researchers in that area.

Subcommittee Actions

The subcommittee on mercury was dissolved after members were praised for their outstanding work on the recent mercury issue.

Memberships on existing subcommittees were reassigned as follows:

	Deepwater Subcommittee – Drs. James Coleman, Michael Rex, William Schroeder, and Joe Smith
	Beaufort Sea Monitoring Issues Subcommittee – Drs. Michael Castellini, Scott Goldsmith, William Schroeder, and Lynda Shapiro
	Sand and Gravel Subcommittee – Drs. James Coleman, Duane Gill, Robert Diaz, Charles Marek, and Livingston Marshall

New subcommittees were formed in three areas to deal proactively with emerging issues and provide specialized assistance to the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region:

	Chemical Contaminants – Drs. Mary Scranton, Denise Stephenson-Hawk, Joe Smith, and John Trefry
	Decommissioning Subcommittee – Drs. Richard Hildreth, Michael Kosro, Livingston Marshall, and Mary Scranton
	Gulf of Mexico/Economic Workshop – Drs. Duane Gill, Scott Goldsmith, Richard Hildreth, and Edella Schlager.