1. National Oil and Gas Program and NEPA
Jill Lewandowski, Ph.D.
Office of Environmental Programs
November 13, 2018

2. National Program Development Process
Draft Proposed Program and NOI published on January 8, 2018
47 sales in 25 Planning Areas, as well as direction to analyze “subarea options”
Next step is publication of the Proposed Program and Draft Programmatic EIS- date TBD
Documents will analyze DPP and subareas
EIS will also analyze additional potential exclusion areas nominated by the public, BOEM SMEs, Federal agencies, state and local governments, and tribes and tribal organizations
Then Proposed Final Program and Final EIS- one year from PP and Draft EIS publication

3. DPP Decision (47 sales in 25 Planning Areas)

4. DPP Decision (47 sales in 25 Planning Areas)

5. DPP Subarea Options (Exclusions)

6. Draft Programmatic EIS
STREAMLINING NEPA
Last PEIS was >900 pages with a substantially smaller geographic scope
Recent executive and Secretarial directives limit the document to no more than 300 pages
Analyzing 25 planning areas in ⅓ of the pages required a strategic, focused approach
Due to a new administration and new executive and secretarial orders, we were faced with some new challenges.
[bring in corresponding animations to match verbal description]
Last time, 5 program areas were considered and this time we have 25.
Last time, it took 19 months from when the DPP was published to get to the Draft EIS.
This time, it will be 9 months (assuming things publish on time)
Last time, we had no page limit.
This time, our limit is 300 pages.
We also consider some new areas that have not previously been considered/analyzed.
So, facing some new challenges we had to do some restructuring. A major concern throughout the process was “how can we save space” due to the strict page limits.
This is why this new EIS looks a bit different than any of the previous ones.

7. Approach to Draft PEIS
Ecoregion concept (also compares across regions)
Binary significance determinations (potentially significant or not expected to be significant)
Focus only on issues that may be potentially significant
Incorporated other analyses by reference
Focus on visuals
Cumulative effects
Exclusions analysis

8. BOEM Ecoregions Areas with similar biota, geographic conditions, etc.
Describe at the broadest level first (region), then ecoregion, then planning area. Specific planning areas are only mentioned when something is unique to that planning area.

9. Approach to Draft PEIS REGIONAL IMPACTS:
Explains the nature of impacts
NATIONAL IMPACTS:
Marine mammals can be affected by noise because…
Explains the context
or species that are impacted
REGIONAL IMPACTS:
Marine mammals in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas Ecoregion, such as bowhead or beluga whales, may be affected by noise in unique ways because…
What does this actually look like?
Within the “national impacts” section you’ll see statements like “marine mammals can be affected by noise because”…
It explains the nature of impacts… the how.
Then within the regional sections, you may see something like these two statements here  these statements provide the context of the impacts or lists the species that may be affected.

10. Focus on Graphics

11. Exclusions
ALASKA
Chukchi Sea Subsistence Use Area
15-mile Chukchi Sea Coastal Buffer
25-mile Chukchi Sea Coastal Buffer
50-mile Chukchi Sea Coastal Buffer
Hanna Shoal
Expanded Hanna Shoal
Barrow Whaling Area
Expanded Barrow Whaling Area
Barrow Canyon Environmentally Important Area (EIA)
Harrison Bay EIA
Cross Island EIA
Camden Bay EIA
Kaktovik Whaling Area
Kaktovik Bowhead Whaling Area
Kaktovik EIA
GULF OF MEXICO
Topographic Features and Pinnacle Trend Stipulations
Baldwin County Buffer
50-, 75-, 100-, and 125-mile Eastern GOM Coastal Buffers 
ATLANTIC
25-nm Coastal Buffer
Biodiversity Strip
Gulf of Maine
Georges Bank
Atlantic Canyons
Exclusion nominations were evaluated and those that met the criteria were analyzed in the Draft Programmatic EIS.
This includes all of the “subarea options” included in the DPP decision.
Analysis of exclusions includes consideration of:
Available information about the ecological or sociocultural value of the area
Impacts that could be reduced or avoided if area was excluded

12. Chukchi Sea Exclusions
Best available science used to support exclusions analysis. BOEM scientist Tim White analyzed ASAMM from 2000­-2016­­ to identify areas of persistence through time (“hotspots”) in the Arctic. This maps shows the DPP subarea options as well as a larger area around Hanna Shoal that was analyzed in the Draft Programmatic EIS. These data show that high densities of walrus use a large area in the vicinity of Hanna Shoal consistently year-to-year.
Hot spots numbers are percent (%) probabilities.
Areas outside the grids cells had < 10 surveys segments each, which was a minimum effort threshold used to calculate persistence for each cell.  
*Note that only areas within the grid cells were included in the analysis.