466 



You could have a lot more even under the existing lease sale. You 

 have sold a lot more leases than have been explored on Georges. 

 There could be a great deal more exploration there. 



The results as far as I am concerned from the BTF studies are 

 very early and premature. It is virtually impossible to draw any 

 concrete long-term conclusions about the results. And it is certain- 

 ly not fair to say, based on 1 year's worth of results, we should not 

 worry about exploration. 



Are we talking about 8 wells or 108 wells or 1,008 wells? Part of 

 it is a function of how many holes they drill, and once you sell 

 them the lease they are free to drill a very large number of holes if 

 they wish. 



Mr. D'Amours. Does the State of Massachusetts or Maine wish to 

 comment further on that question? 



Mr. CoLGAN. When you ask the question about the risk of explor- 

 atory drilling you get to the whole issue of what the risk of OCS 

 activity is. There is, I think, an undeniable bottom line, which is 

 that there is nothing government, or industry, or anybody else can 

 do to guarantee that oil and gas activity anywhere on the Outer 

 Continental Shelf is risk-free. It is just not possible. This problem 

 is, unfortunately, stuck in that whole class of human activities that 

 has some attendant risk to it. 



The question is: How do you go about making decisions on what 

 oil and gas activity is appropriate given the fact there is always 

 going to be some risk. That gets to the balancing issue that the 

 OCS Lands Act amendments attempt to set forth as the test for 

 that decision. 



It seems to me that, the results so far, are only preliminary. We 

 have only completed data, collection. Much analysis and interpreta- 

 tion remains to be done before any conclusions can be drawn from 

 a management point of view about the decision implications from 

 those studies. 



But it does seem to me that the initial results show that the 

 major hypotheses that we attempted to test in the biological task 

 force monitoring program, those being: that drilling muds could 

 significantly affect the area immediately around the rig through 

 accumulation and long-term disruption of the benthic community; 

 that hydrocarbon discharges would accummulate in the sediments 

 and also tend to be toxic and disruptive to the benthic communities 

 which are the foundations of the food chain for the ground fish in- 

 dustry (the mainstay of Georges Bank fish) have been shown to be 

 false. Those effects are not being found, based on what we have 

 seen so far. 



The conclusion I draw is that: for the kind of areas on Georges 

 Bank which were studied, and the kind of drilling which was stud- 

 ied, there may not be a major problem from routine discharges. 

 That is the only implication I can draw. 



I draw from that an implication that exploratory drilling in some 

 areas of Georges Bank from a routine discharge point of view is 

 probably an acceptable risk. On other areas of Georges Bank, in 

 the canyons, in scallop beds, near shore, in the great South Chan- 

 nel, the jury is, at best, still out. 



My judgment right now is that those areas should not be leased, 

 particularly where you find high value benthic commercial fisher- 



