As Nations Pledge to Create Ocean Preserves, How Do Those Promises Add Up?
for planning and assessing marine protected areas in 2021. Our key message was that effectively conserving ocean habitats and marine life will require working together with local communities and governments to create more marine protected areas and set tighter curbs on destructive activities.President Barack Obama designated Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean in 2016 to protect fragile and largely pristine deep marine ecosystems and rich biodiversity, including important deep-sea corals, endangered whales and sea turtles, other marine mammals and numerous fish
Subsea Mining: The Race is On, But Effects are Unclear
it but has not ratified it, due to concerns that it puts too many limits on exploitation of deep sea resources. As a result, the U.S. is not bound by the treaty, although it follows most of its rules independently. Recent administrations, including those of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, sought to ratify the treaty, but failed to muster a two-thirds majority in the Senate to support it.Locations of three main types of marine mineral deposits: polymetallic nodules (blue); polymetallic or seafloor massive sulfides (orange); and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (yellow). Miller
US Government Sued Over Atlantic Seismic Testing
tourism industry worth $21 billion."I'm here not just to say 'no to offshore drilling' but 'hell no to offshore drilling,'" added Cunningham, who said he would introduce legislation next year to reinstate a ban on U.S. offshore drilling that had been renewed by President Barack Obama.South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster opposes drilling off the coast of his state. State Attorney General Alan Wilson will send a letter of opposition to Commerce Secretary Ross soon, a spokesman said by phone. More than a dozen states are seeking exemptions from offshore drilling leases."
Trump Aims to Open Nearly All US Offshore to Oil Drilling
effort to open previously off-limits acreage in the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans comes less than eight years after BP Plc's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico - the largest in American history. The disaster caused billions of dollars in economic damage and led former President Barack Obama's to increase regulation of the industry. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday the department's draft National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2019 to 2024 would make over 90 percent of the outer continental shelf’s total acreage available for leasing
Trump Administration Approves Eni Plan to Drill Offshore Alaska
Offshore Energy Strategy executive order to extend offshore oil and gas drilling to areas in the Arctic and other places that have been off limits to support the industry. Eni's leases, which were set to expire by the end of the year, were outside of an area protected by former President Barack Obama weeks before he left office. The company's plan to move ahead with risky and expensive drilling comes despite years of low oil prices and dangerous Arctic conditions. Royal Dutch Shell Plc quit its exploration quest offshore Alaska in 2015 after a ship it had leased suffered a gash in
Obama Bans New Drilling off Alaska, Part of Atlantic Shore
U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday banned new oil and gas drilling in federal waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, in a push to leave his stamp on the environment before Republican Donald Trump takes office next month. Obama used a 1950s-era law called the Outer Continental Shelf Act that allows presidents to limit areas from mineral leasing and drilling. Environmental groups said that meant Trump's incoming administration would have to go court if it sought to reverse the move. The ban affects 115 million acres (46.5 million hectares) of federal waters off Alaska in the
China to Return Seized US Underwater Drone
his Nov. 8 election victory. China lodged a diplomatic protest. The 10-minute telephone call was the first of its kind since U.S. President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of "one China." President Barack Obama said on Friday it was fine for Trump to review Washington's policy toward Taiwan, but he cautioned that a shift could lead to significant consequences in the U.S. relationship with Beijing. (By Ben Blanchard and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Josephine
Climate Scientists Adjust as Trump Builds Team of Oil Allies
of their work, and safeguarding data that shows global warming is real. The early reactions, gathered by Reuters in more than a dozen interviews, may foretell a broader shift in the U.S. climate science community, which had enjoyed solid political and financial support under President Barack Obama but could be isolated under a new administration skeptical of climate change and committed to expanding oil drilling and coal mining. "I think it is maybe really necessary to refocus what you are doing and how you are labeling it," said Andreas Prein, a scientist at the federally
Obama Administration Bars New Oil, Gas Exploration off Alaska
open to drilling, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico. The plan focuses on the best areas "with the highest resource potential, lowest conflict and established infrastructure - and removes regions that are simply not right to lease," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said. President Barack Obama, who last year became the first sitting president to cross the Arctic Circle, has made fighting climate change and protecting the Arctic priorities in his administration. But President-elect Donald Trump, a Republican who takes office on Jan. 20, 2017, has vowed to open resources to petroleum
February 2025
