US pauses work on one seismic permit in Atlantic

President Donald Trump's administration has paused processing on one of the five pending applications to conduct seismic surveys for oil and gas in the US Atlantic.

The US Bureau of Energy Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had been expected to make decisions on requests from five companies for seismic permits, after another federal agency issued a related set of permits to the companies in November. The permits would mark a major step toward oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic by allowing surveying vessels to start their work.

But one of the permits remains incomplete. BOEM said that the surveying company WesternGeco, one of the permit applicants, still must complete work under a law called the Coastal Zone Management Act with North Carolina and South Carolina.

WesternGeco's parent, oilfield services company Schlumberger, did not respond for comment. WesternGeco in its initial 2014 permit application had proposed to conduct seismic surveys off South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, and the company is still continuing steps to obtain the permit, a source said.

BOEM's acting director Walter Cruickshank, in congressional testimony this week, said the agency is "completing its review of four permit applications" to conduct seismic work in the Atlantic. Those permit decisions are on a separate track from BOEM's pending proposal to open the Atlantic, and most other federal waters, to oil and gas leasing from 2019-2024.

US lawmakers have raised concerns about the number of companies seeking to conduct surveys in similar parts of the Atlantic. They worry noise from airguns, which are fired frequently for weeks or months at a time, on the surveying vessels will disturb the endangered North Atlantic right whale and other species.

"Why are there five different companies seeking permits to explore the same area?" representative Jeff Van Drew (D-New Jersey) asked at a US House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday.

South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, along with other states and environmentalists, are seeking a court injunction to block any seismic surveys in the Atlantic, until a judge can review their challenge to an underlying permit related to marine mammal protections. The judge has yet to rule on the request.