B01_FBO_Notice_1.pdf

PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY AS IT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY

NOTICE THAT WILL BE ISSUED. This procurement is being conducted in accordance with FAR Part 15 Contracting by Negotiation. The Department of the Interior (DOI), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), on behalf of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), intends to competitively award a firm-fixed-price (FFP) type of contract as a result of this notice for a project titled “Understanding Impacts of Offshore Carbon Sequestration on the Marine Environment: Informing Operational Management Needs Through Focused Literarure Review and Synthesis”.

There are no set aside restrictions. The BSEE Acquisition Operations Branch is the contracting office for this procurement and the resulting contract administration. All potential Offerors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) database at www.sam.gov in order to receive Federal Government awards. The applicable NAICS Code is 541620, Environmental Consulting Services. The period of performance of the resultant contract is expected to be 24 months from the date of award.

INTRODUCTION

In 2021, the INVEST in America Act (i.e., Bipartisan Infrastructure Law [BIL]) amended the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act’s (OCSLA’s) leasing provisions to authorize the Department of Interior (DOI) to grant leases, easements, and rights-of-way on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for the purpose of carbon sequestration (See 43 U.S.C. § 1337(p)(1)), granting the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) management authority over carbon sequestration (CS) in geologic sub-seabed formations on the OCS.

BOEM is currently developing a rulemaking to allow for the implementation of a nationwide CS Program on the OCS.

The new OCS CS Program will cover all aspects of a full program from pre-leasing activities through site closure including pre-lease geological and geophysical exploration, resource evaluation, leasing, planning, site characterization, drilling, installation, injection operations, risk management, financial assurance, monitoring, decommissioning, long-term liability, and site closure. BOEM needs environmental information to inform its rulemaking; national and regional policy; and program development and implementation.

This includes information to satisfy BOEM’s legal obligations under, for example, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Coastal Zone Management Act, Magnuson- Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, National Marine Sanctuaries Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.

To address environmental requirements of implementing an OCS CS Program, BOEM must be prepared to accurately assess potential changes to a carbon dioxide (CO2) plume/pressure front and environmental impacts (negative, beneficial, or otherwise) resulting from the build-out of one, several, and multiple OCS CS projects. BOEM is requesting this analysis for three of the four BOEM OCS Regions: the Gulf of Mexico OCS Region (GOM), the Atlantic OCS Region (ATL), and the Pacific OCS Region (PAC). BOEM needs information on the potential impact producing factors from OCS CS activities; the potential impacts to the human, marine, and coastal environment; the http://www.sam.gov/ monitoring that will be required during each phase of a CS project; and the most effective monitoring methods and protocols for the CO2 plume and pressure front and each potentially impacted environmental resource in each OCS Region (GOM, ATL, PAC) during each project phase.

STUDY OBJECTIVES

The goals of this study are to (1) obtain and synthesize information regarding potential direct and indirect impacts, and impacts accrued over the CS project lifecycle, specific to each OCS Region (GOM, ATL, PAC), to the human, marine, and coastal environment from CS activities; (2) use this information to provide recommendations for national and region-specific environmental lease stipulations, mitigation measures, conditions of approval for plans and permits, and risk management and monitoring strategies that can be incorporated into environmental reviews and program implementation processes; (3) obtain and synthesize information regarding the most effective monitoring methods and protocols for each potentially impacted environmental resource (specific to each of the three OCS regions), the CO2 plume and pressure front, and induced seismicity during each project phase; and (4) provide an annotated bibliography detailing results from the literature search.

This study will build upon knowledge gained during the prior BOEM-funded study (Smyth and Hovorka 2018), which details recommendations for best management practices (BMPs) for CS in OCS sub-seabed geologic formations. The BMPs report focuses on operational considerations like site characterization and selection and CO2 transportation, but does not provide information on potential environmental impacts including direct, indirect, and cumulative effects that are needed to inform the OCS-wide NEPA and other environmental analyses required at every agency decision point throughout program implementation from rule promulgation to pre-lease resource analysis, lease planning, leasing, plan approvals, and permit approvals. This environmental information is also needed to inform potential lease stipulations, mitigation measures, conditions of approval for plans and permits, risk management and monitoring strategies, national programmatic policy, and region-specific program/operational guidance. Furthermore, the BMPs report provides an initial analysis of the monitoring needed for the subsurface CO2 plume; however, with a nearly 10-year gap since the original research was conducted, the analysis on monitoring needs to be updated based on recent scientific analyses and project work. In addition, the BMPs report does not address monitoring of the pressure front, monitoring of environmental resources, and monitoring for induced seismicity, which will all be researched and addressed in this study.

The objectives of this study are to conduct a literature review and synthesis from a variety of vetted sources with relevant, up-to-date, and state-of-the-science information for three BOEM OCS regions (GOM, ATL, PAC) to: identify the potential human, marine, and coastal resources that may be impacted from CS activities in each region;

identify the potential impact producing factors from CS activities for each region;

describe the potential environmental impacts to the human, marine, and coastal resources including direct and indirect impacts, and impacts accrued over the CS project lifecycle specific to each region; identify and describe the monitoring that will be required for each environmental resource during each phase of a CS project; and identify and describe the most effective monitoring methods and protocols for the CO2 plume and pressure front, induced seismicity, and each potentially impacted environmental resource for each region and project phase.

The study will use the above information to provide recommendations for national and region-specific environmental lease stipulations, mitigation measures, and conditions of approval for plans and permits to minimize potential impacts to each environmental resource, as appropriate. It will also use the information on best monitoring practices to provide recommendations for appropriate national and region-specific risk management and monitoring strategies for the CO2 plume and pressure front, induced seismicity, and each environmental resource for each OCS Region (GOM, ATL, PAC) during each stage of a CS project.

The study results will be provided for three OCS regions (GOM, ATL, PAC) and will identify knowledge gaps that will provide clear need and direction for future desk-top, field, and laboratory-based studies.

HOW TO COMPETE FOR THIS REQUIREMENT: If you are interested in participating in this competition, please send your organization’s name, business size status, point of contact, address, telephone number, email address and SAM Unique Entity ID via email to the Contracting Officer, Tae-Won Eum at Tae- Won.Eum@bsee.gov at the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) June 12, 2024. Reference Solicitation No.

140M0124R0003 on all correspondence. Inquiries must be submitted in writing to the email address referenced above. Telephone inquiries are strongly discouraged. Those organizations expressing an interest in this opportunity will receive a copy of the complete solicitation upon issuance.

mailto:Tae-Won.Eum@bsee.gov mailto:Tae-Won.Eum@bsee.gov

STUDY OBJECTIVES