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Salazar puts coastal drilling plans on hold
 | You knew this was coming ... |
President Obama is shelving a plan announced in the final days of the Bush administration to open much of the U.S. coast to oil drilling, including 130 million acres off California's coast from Mendocino to San Diego.
On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the plan be put on hold while his agency conducts a 180-day review of the country's offshore oil and gas resources. Salazar's critical comments about the plan signaled that the new administration will seek to rewrite it if not completely scrap it.
The Bush proposal "opened the possibility of oil and gas leases along the entire Eastern seaboard, portions of offshore California and the far eastern Gulf of Mexico with almost no consultation from states, industry or community input," Salazar said at a news conference in Washington. "In my view it was a headlong rush of the worst kind."
| Not true, bubbo. Everyone knew what was going on. We've been debating this for three decades. The states know. The communities know. The industry certainly knows. |
He said his agency will hold four public meetings over the next few months - one in Alaska, one on the West Coast, one along the East Coast and one near the Gulf Coast - to hear from governors, local officials, industry groups and environmentalists about the plan.
| Especially the environmentalists. Expect the oil industry groups to be treated as the enemy. |
Salazar did not directly address the bigger question: Whether Obama will seek to renew the three-decade-old presidential moratorium on drilling off most of the East and West coasts, which Bush lifted last July amid growing public anger over soaring gas prices.
He echoed comments made by Obama during last year's campaign that the administration would be open to more offshore drilling,
| "We also need an enemy and a scape-goat." |
but only as part of a broader energy policy focused on producing more renewable energy from wind, solar, geothermal as well as tidal and wave power. "For those of you from the oil and gas industry ... I pledge to you that you will have a seat at the table," Salazar said. "We need your expertise and your resources as we move forward. But as President Obama has said and as I believe ... a drill-only energy approach, onshore and offshore, is not enough."
| Drilling now would start to bring oil and NG on line in a few years. It would be a wonderful boost to the economy. These are high-paying jobs, and in case he hasn't noticed, California and the other coastal states could use those. |
The congressional moratorium on offshore drilling also expired last year, and the Bush administration moved quickly to forward a lease sale plan that would open areas off most of the U.S. coast, from the Gulf of Maine to Chesapeake Bay and the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico, plus the Pacific Coast. The plan also opened new areas of Alaska's Bristol Bay and the Arctic Ocean. Bush's top Interior officials released the plan on Jan. 16, the final business day of the Bush administration, knowing the new president was likely to rewrite the plan.
Oil industry leaders were disappointed by Salazar's announcement. Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America said, "This unnecessary delay will hold America back, at the precise moment when we need to move forward the most."
But environmentalists praised the move, calling it a sharp break from the pro-drilling policies of the Bush administration.
In California, the Bush administration's plan would open three major areas, one in Northern California and two in Southern California, which it claimed had "known hydrocarbon potential." The plan would have allowed drilling on 44 million acres of federal waters off Humboldt and Mendocino counties, and 89 million acres off San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.
One of the leases would have required special directional drilling equipment to reach oil beneath the Santa Barbara Ecological Preserve. In Southern California, there are 79 existing leases with 43 producing and 36 undeveloped.
Posted by: Steve White 2009-02-11 |
