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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2006
US House bill authorizes offshore drilling; Senate passes MSA bill
WASHINGTON, DC – The US House of Representatives passed the “Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act” (DOER) on June 29, a bill that would allow drilling for oil and gas 50-200 miles from shore and give states a role in setting the precise limit.
House Resources Committee members crafted the bipartisan bill. A committee press release said participating lawmakers had vowed to “strike a balance in the one-size-fits-all bans that restrict access to America’s vast energy supplies on the outer continental shelf.”
Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA) said previous offshore bans, including executive orders signed by former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, “were enacted during times when energy production and environmental protection were thought to be mutually exclusive.”
Said Pombo, “They are not. The balance struck in this bill will save and create American jobs, lower prices for consumers, and deliver coastal states unprecedented power to protect 100 miles of their seas.”
The House bill passed on a vote of 232 to 187.
US Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) pledged to stop oil and gas drilling off the Maine coast.
“This misguided policy could dramatically impact coastal-dependent states like Maine at a time when we are working to stabilize fragile fish stocks and ecosystems,” she said. “There are ways of reducing our reliance on foreign imported oil that do not threaten our fragile coastal ecosystems.”
The US Senate unanimously passed its Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act reauthorization bill on June 19. US Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the powerful senator for whom the act is co-named, championed the bill.
S 2012 requires every fishery management plan to contain an annual catch limit set at or below the optimum yield of the fishery and requires that harvests in excess of the annual catch limit be deducted from the limit for the following year “or in multiyear specifications for fisheries using multiyear plans as long as (the overage) is still deducted within three years.”
Snowe fought hard to soften the original language, which would have required overages to be deducted in their entirety from the following year’s quota.
In a statement on the passage of the bill, Snowe said she was able to include language to allow “New England to use a range of fisheries management tools to satisfy total allowable catch rules.”
Snowe also managed to include language that:
• Requires the approval of two-thirds of eligible fishermen to approve any individual quota plan proposed for New England;
• Directs managers to consider steaming time in fishery management plans so fishermen don’t lose days-at-sea steaming;
• Directs managers to take into account the cumulative effects of management actions and to explore how to mitigate those effects;
• Requires the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to streamline the approval process for experimental and exempted fishing permits;
• Authorizes a cooperative research study on the role of herring in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem;
• Requires NMFS to take action against states that allow cod harvest in violation of fishery management plans; and
• Directs the secretary of commerce to work with the small business administration to facilitate US investment in fish processing.
As of mid-July, the House had yet to consider the Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization bill co-sponsored by Pombo and US Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), which was approved by the House Resources Committee on May 17. /cfn/
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