Right Column

Mineral Resources Management Division - Rigs to Reefs Workshop

Warner Chabot

Mr. Chabot is the Director of the Pacific Region of the Center for Marine Conservation. The Center for Marine Conservation is a national organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., which focuses on a variety of marine issues including marine habitat, wildlife and fisheries, and water pollution.

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Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. The Center for Marine Conservation is the nation's largest concentration devoted exclusively to the marine environment.  We have 20,000 members in California.  And we welcome the opportunity to participate in this workshop.

We believe that you the State Lands Commission are among the very few state agency leaders and stewards of California's ocean and marine environment and the living resources within it.

Let me be very, very clear.  California's living marine environment is in trouble.  Many of the sport commercial fisheries and some of the marine mammals are in decline.  Much of it is due to poor management and inadequate management in the past as well as other factors such as climate change and on-shore impacts such as pollution.

The State and Federal funding over the past decade has been woefully inadequate to do the absolute minor basic assessment in monitoring management and restoration of the ocean environment.

Nationally we don't even inventory two thirds of the fisheries that we fish.  Of the one third that we do inventory, we know definitely that we're overfishing at least 40 percent of them.  That's not a good track record for a nation that's supposed to be managing its marine environment.

Therefore, as a representative of an environmental nonprofit, I strongly support efforts that would, one, increase funding for marine life management; two, increase overall habitat and productivity of the total marine environment and fisheries.

So I am strongly intrigued, interested and open-minded about the rigs to reef concept.  Our organization is open-minded but skeptical.  And I emphasize skeptical.  I think some of the key questions that you the commissioners need to answer and which I believe have not been answered to date even in today's session, revolve around issues of fish productivity, liability, money, conflicts with users.

Some of these questions should be answered to a much finer detail to your satisfaction before any major state-authorized and legislation is finalized, passes, and signed.

I urge you to move cautiously and thoughtfully to answer these questions before you advise the legislature as to the State Lands Commission's position on any proposed legislation.

I agree with some of the speakers that suggest that money may be overly dominated in this in this issue. Clearly revenues from a rigs to reef program go a long way to support marine life conservation restoration and management programs.

If and when I'm convinced and my organization is convinced that the science proves increased biological benefits and regional productivities of fisheries, then I'll be happy to jump into bed, metaphorically speaking of course, with my colleagues at Exxon, Chevron and the major oil industry leaders.

I urge the commission to seek answers to some of the following questions. First, those questions and issues raised by the Intergovernmental Decommissioning Working Group, which I believe has taken the lead and should continue to be the lead forum in discussing and debating and providing information to the commission.

Secondly, overall fisheries' productivity. Will these artificial reefs truly increase the number of fish?  Or will they simply attract fish away from potentially more productive natural reefs?

There seems to be a limited amount of science on it, and from my amateur nonbiologist, nonexpert review of that literature, it seems to indicate the debate is open and that artificial reefs seem to be more attractors rather than overall producers in increasing regional I think the study of this question is essential. 

Three. Liability. I believe that the commission should review the experience of liability costs in the Gulf of Mexico, the number of incidents and the resolution of those incidents and look at what the cost of the liability has been.

Fourth. Maintenance. What is the total cost to all the effected State and Federal agencies to permit, monitor and maintain artificial reef programs over their life history.

And finally, cost.  What is the cost likely to be?

I, frankly, was a little confused, and let me throw out something on the numbers.  The numbers that I heard this morning, and maybe I'm incorrect and we can deal with this during the follow up, was that in the Gulf of Mexico 132 platform jackets were converted to reefs.

One of the speakers said that the savings per platform were in the one half to $1 million range.  Therefore, the total savings to the oil industry in the Gulf for these 132 platforms should be somewhere between $65 to $130 million.

If the industry is sharing one half of their savings with the affected states, then shouldn’t the states have been receiving somewhere of $30 to $65 million?  And if so, why did the states receive $18 million?

In conclusion, rigs to reefs are a concept that on the surface seems to have potential significant merit.  But before you make a final decision, you need to answer some tough questions to make sure you're getting a Mercedes and not an exploding Pinto.  Thank you.