Under Obama plan, agencies would boost offshore drilling efforts
Interior Department would hold lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Cook Inlet in Alaska by 2012, and begin exploratory drilling.
The Obama administration announced a major policy shift Wednesday in declaring its intention to expand offshore oil and gas development and exploration to areas previously off-limits.
Standing before a largely military crowd at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, President Obama outlined a comprehensive plan to expand domestic energy sources and reduce the nation's reliance on foreign petroleum. A key part of that plan is to expand domestic oil and gas production offshore, he said.
The administration will revise some aspects of an offshore oil and gas leasing program covering the years 2007 to 2012 developed by the Bush administration, and accommodate new development plans in its yet-to-be-released 2012-2017 leasing program.
Perhaps most controversially, the new strategy calls for more drilling throughout the Gulf of Mexico, including developing new areas in the eastern Gulf, 125 miles from Florida's popular beaches. Those areas currently are closed to development by law.
Under the plan, the Interior Department would hold lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Cook Inlet in Alaska by 2012. The department also would begin exploratory drilling and environmental scoping in the mid-Atlantic and in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska to inform future development plans.
Exploratory drilling could begin as early as this summer.
Because the Atlantic Coast has been off-limits for development, research data is decades old and relatively little is known about its potential, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a conference call with reporters Wednesday following the president's announcement.
"The fact that we're scoping does not mean there will be development," Salazar said. Besides conducting exploratory research and collecting seismic data necessary for future development, Interior will hold public meetings throughout the affected regions and weigh all economic interests, including tourism and fishing, he said.
Interior's Minerals Management Service estimates there are 39 billion to 63 billion barrels of oil and between 168 trillion and 294 trillion cubic feet of natural gas economically recoverable from the planning areas now under consideration for the 2012-2017 lease program. That's believed to be as much as 80 percent of the undiscovered, economically recoverable oil and gas on the U.S. outer continental shelf.
MMS estimates the Gulf of Mexico alone holds 36 billion to 41.5 billion barrels of undiscovered, economically recoverable oil and between 161 trillion and 207 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources.
"Our efforts to strategically open new areas in the Eastern Gulf would represent the largest expansion of our nation's available offshore oil and gas supplies in three decades," Salazar said.
In addition to opening new areas to drilling, the strategy also calls for protecting some areas previously slated for development in Alaska. For example, Interior is withdrawing Bristol Bay from consideration for oil and gas development through 2017.
"Bristol Bay is a national treasure that we must protect for future generations," Salazar said.