Natural Gas Deepwater Port Facility News

The U.S. Coast Guard and Maritime Administration announced today that they are revising an environmental impact statement to lower estimates for potential impacts to red drum and other fish species of concern due to a proposed Shell USA Oil and Gas liquefied natural gas deepwater port facility in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard identified a calculation error after the original environmental impact statement was published that had erroneously placed the potential annual impact to red drum as equivalent to 8.5 percent of the 2002 Gulf of Mexico commercial and recreational harvest. The revision states that the proposed "Gulf Landing" facility could annually cause the death of eggs and larvae equivalent to 0.8 percent of the 2002 harvest of red drum had they grown to harvestable size.