Tag Archives: Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act

Lawsuit claims US federal government violated regulations in approving Massachusetts offshore wind project

A Texas non-profit research institute that aims to promote free enterprise in Texas and the nation is acting on behalf of fishing companies in Massachusetts, a state 2,000 miles away, in a lawsuit that seeks to stop development of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project. The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has named the US Department of the Interior, the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Defense and other agencies and individuals as defendants in the suit. The lawsuit, filed in December 2021, claims the defendants violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and their respective rules and regulations. >click to read< 10:54

Former Minerals Management Service director, Elizabeth Birnbaum,: US ‘on a course to repeat’ Gulf oil spill

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, the former Minerals Management Service director, Elizabeth Birnbaum, says the Obama administration “still has not taken key steps . . . to increase drilling safety.” Birnbaum, who was ousted from her job overseeing offshore drilling just weeks after BP’s Macondo well blew out in the Gulf, penned the op-ed with Jacqueline Savitz, vice president for U.S. oceans at the conservation group Oceana. Read more here NOAA Inaction in the Gulf of Mexico -In her September 21, 2009 twenty-six page response to Lisa Birnbaum, Director of the Mineral Management Service on the Draft Proposed Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2010-2015. Ms. Lubchenco Read more here  18:43