SPL vs. SEL

This is the second article CRE has written about comments filed on the National Science Foundation’s draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (“DPEIS”) for NSF’s offshore and overseas seismic activities. This second article discusses comments on the regulatory metric that U.S. agencies use to regulate seismic.   

We are writing these articles in part because CRE has been asked by several Congressional committees to advise them on possible job-killing rules.  CRE’s Letter to Cong. Issa in response to one of these inquiries is attached as Appendix A to this article. An InsideEPA article on the letter is attached as Appendix B.  

We informed Congress that too stringent regulation of seismic could prevent oil and gas exploration and injure small businesses and others dependent on a healthy U.S. offshore oil and gas industry.  Because NMFS is a cooperating agency on the NSF DPEIS, we believe that the DPEIS indicates what may be the future for oil and gas seismic regulation on acoustic models, regulatory metrics and other issues.

Please see CRE’s complete discussion of the issue attached below.