U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service Gulf of Mexico OCS Region

MMS Issues Environmental Streamlining Document: First Grid EA

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) completed the first programmatic, grid-based environmental assessment (EA), or Grid EA, that will allow streamlining the environmental review of deepwater oil and gas projects.  The preparation of Grid EA's is an integral part of MMS's comprehensive deepwater approach developed last year to assess the potential impacts of deepwater development activities in a procedurally sound and efficient manner.  This EA can be reviewed at the GOMR website at http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/ea_grid/ea_grid.asp

MMS Regional Director Chris Oynes called this accomplishment "a major step in streamlining the process for deepwater projects.  This process holds the potential for bringing domestic oil and gas deposits into production in a more effective timeframe without sacrificing environmental values or careful environmental review."

Once a programmatic EA has been completed for a particular grid, the environmental review for most of the subsequent development projects in the grid will consist of a categorical exclusion review; preparation of another EA will not be necessary for most projects.

The Grid EA was prepared for Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corporation's Nansen Project located in the Western Planning Area in East Breaks, Blocks 602 and 646. These blocks lie within Grid 4. This environmental assessment was printed as document MMS 2001-075.

Several more Grid EA's are currently in progress. A detailed discussion of this comprehensive strategy can be found at http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/ea_grid/NEPADWSTRATEGY.pdf.  The MMS divided those areas of the Western and Central Planning Areas of the Gulf of Mexico with water depths greater than 400 meters (m) into 17 grids that were developed to ensure a broad and systematic analysis of the area.  The grids depict 17 areas of biological similarity, primarily on the basis of benthic communities.  These areas are shown on the attached map.

Using the grid approach, the MMS will prepare an EA to address a single proposed development project within each of the 17 grid areas.  The grid system has been designed to control the distribution of environmental analyses, similar to the way a sampling pattern controls the distribution of sample sites.  The MMS believes that the whole array of assessments will be sufficient to represent impacts of activities in deepwater portions of the two planning areas.

MMS is the federal agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation's oil, natural gas and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf in federal offshore waters.  The agency also collects, accounts for and disburses mineral revenues http://www.mrm.mms.gov/Stats/disb.htm from federal and Indian leases.  These revenues totaled nearly $8 billion last year and more than $110 billion since the agency was created in 1982.  Annually, nearly $1 billion from those revenues go into the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the acquisition and development of state and federal park and recreation lands.

-MMS-GOM-

MMS's Website Address: http://www.mms.gov