Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic Releases New Offshore Drilling White Paper

Via the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic 

Just ahead of the New England blizzard, the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic has released two new documents, building on its pioneering legal analysis of offshore drilling regulation in the Arctic and other U.S. waters.

Clinic comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s draft Environmental Impact Statement for an oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea.  The comments focused on BOEM’s analysis of the impacts of a Very Large Oil Spill, particularly (1) the assumption that operators could stop an end-of-season spill during an Arctic winter and (2) shortcomings in the analysis of impacts of oil spill dispersants on wildlife and indigenous communities.

The latest in a series of Clinic offshore drilling white papers, Offshore Drilling: Coordinating and Improving Access to Information.  This paper recommends improvements to the Department of the Interior’s mechanisms for facilitating public access to, and inter-agency sharing of, information from companies engaged in offshore drilling.

Other Emmett Clinic papers on offshore drilling include Suggested Indicators of Environmentally Responsible Performance of Offshore Oil and Gas Companies Proposing to Drill in the U.S. Arctic and Recommendations for Improved Oversight of Offshore Drilling Based on a Review of 40 Regulatory Regimes.  The Clinic also submitted comments on a federal Draft Safety Culture Policy Statement for Offshore Drilling.  Some Clinic students have traveled to Washington, DC, to present their work to officials at the Department of Interior and to legislative staff on Capitol Hill.

The Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic gives students the opportunity to do real legal work on today’s most pressing energy and environmental issues.  The Clinic is part of the Harvard Environmental Law Program, working alongside Harvard’s world-class environmental law faculty and the Harvard Environmental Policy Initiative.