The US Department of Homeland Security announced grant allocations for fiscal year 2016 including fund for its Port Security Grant Program with the aim to protect US ports from possible terror attacks.
Read moreUS Senator has introduced a new bill which amends the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to impose penalties and provide for the recovery of removal costs and damages in connection with certain discharges of oil from foreign offshore units, and for other purposes.
Read moreThe US Department of Defense announced that it is providing $1.76 million in additional funding to military laboratories to expand Zika virus surveillance worldwide and assess the virus’ impact on deployed service members’ health and readiness.
Read moreU.S. propane exports have increased significantly over the past three years, but only after market participants overcame several transportation challenges to reach export customers. The first challenge was to build sufficient export capacity, which has mostly already taken place. The second challenge is how to economically transport large quantities of propane over long distances.
Read moreIn its just-released 2016-2020 Port Planned Infrastructure Investment Survey, the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) asked its U.S. member ports how much they and their private-sector partners plan to spend on port-related freight and passenger infrastructure over the next five years. The answer was a whopping $154.8 billion.
Read moreIts hailed as the biggest ship in history to dock in a US port. But the arrival of the giant vessel packed with containers also shows how the US is lagging behind the world-wide shipping industry.
Read moreUS Senators for California introduced the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, legislation to permanently prohibit offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf of California, Oregon and Washington.The legislation, first introduced in 2010, would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to permanently protect the $44 billion coastal economies of the three states, which support nearly 650,000 jobs in California, Oregon and Washington."Offshore drilling carries real risks, and an accident would be catastrophic for California's environment and economy," Senator Feinstein said. "This is why I'm very happy to join with Senator Boxer and other colleagues on this legislation to permanently ban offshore drilling on the West Coast.""We cannot afford to put California's coastal economy at risk by drilling offshore," Senator Boxer said. "More than half a million California jobs and more than $34 billion in annual economic activity depend on a pristine coastline, and we owe it to current and future generations to protect our coast from a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.""We must protect our coastal communities, economies and ecosystems against the risk of an oil spill. In addition, the threat of seismic activity along the Cascadia Subduction Zone increases the probability of a catastrophic oil spill in the ...
Read moreCHALOS & Co law firm informs that a federal appeals court in New York ordered US EPA to rewrite its rules regarding the discharge of ballast water from ships, following reaction by environmental groups that said the rules threatened the nation’s waterways.Four environmental agencies petitioned the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for review of the Vessel General Permit (“VGP”) issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) in 2013 under Section 509(b)(1) of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), which regulates the discharge of ballast water from ships (and is the primary cause of the spread of invasive species to different bodies of water). On October 5, 2015, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Natural Resources Defense Counsel, et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, holding that the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the permit and remanded back to the EPA for further proceedings. The sixty-five (65) page decision goes into great detail regarding the historic context for why such a VGP is necessary, the purposes of the CWA, and the technical components of the statute for preventing pollutants and measuring compliance with the act, specifically water quality standards. The EPA issued the 2013 VGP allowing vessels to discharge ballast water ...
Read moreUS Congressman Representative J. Huffman introduced the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act of 2015 to prohibit oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean. The bill introduction comes on the heels of Royal Dutch Shell’s announcement that it will end drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean “for the foreseeable future.” Huffman’s bill would effectively bring a permanent end to drilling operations in the area.“Oil drilling in the harsh and dangerous Arctic Ocean carries unacceptable risks. An oil spill in the Arctic would be an environmental catastrophe that would pollute and cripple the ocean ecosystem, harming wildlife and damaging fragile shores for decades to come,”said Huffman.“Today’s news that Shell will end all Arctic drilling is a welcome victory for the marine environment, but Congress must now act to permanently protect the Arctic Ocean and put it off-limits to any future irresponsible drilling proposals. The Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act would keep Alaska’s environment safe, permanently.”The Department of Interior estimates a 75 percent chance of one or more large oil spills as a result of drilling in the Arctic. Should an oil spill occur, between 44% and 62% of spilled crude oil would remain in open water or broken ice longer than 30 days, ...
Read moreUS ratifies two key legal instruments
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