“Minerals Management Service: Managing Resources and Protecting the Environment”
Dr. Walter Johnson
Minerals Management Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Monday, April 4, 2005
3:30 PM
Room 109, Crittenton Hall
Abstract
The Minerals Management Service (MMS), a federal agency within the Department of the
Interior (DOI), is responsible for managing the nation’s oil, natural gas, and other mineral
resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and the mineral revenues from OCS, Federal and
Indian lands. Within MMS, the Offshore Minerals Management program (OMM) is responsible for OCS
activities, which range from administering OCS leases and monitoring the safety of offshore
facilities to protecting our coastal and marine environments. The MMS assesses oil-spill risks
associated with offshore energy activities off the U.S. continental coast and Alaska. These
analyses address the likelihood of spill occurrences, the transport and fate of any spilled oil,
and the environmental impacts that might occur as a result of the spill. The MMS Oil-Spill Risk
Analysis (OSRA) model combines the probability of spill occurrence with a statistical description of
hypothetical oil-spill contacts to environmental resources. Paths of hypothetical oil spills are based
on hindcasts of winds, ocean currents, and ice in Arctic waters, using the best available input information.
Biography
Dr. Walter Johnson is an oceanographer at the Minerals Management Service (MMS),
Environmental Sciences Branch in Herndon, Virginia. He performs oil spill modeling
for the Oil Spill Risk Analysis used by MMS in environmental documents. He is a
Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative for several contract and cooperative
agreement studies. Dr. Johnson was previously at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks,
in the Institute of Marine Science, doing research on the coastal ocean in the Gulf of
Alaska, Kotzebue Sound and the Chukchi Sea. Dr. Johnson earned his B.S. and M.S. from
the University of Miami in 1972 and 1976, and his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware
in 1981.
Reception before seminar at 3:00 PM
Crittenton Hall
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529
757-683-5548
Last updated 3/14/2005.
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