The Obama Moratorium: No offshore drilling while he’s in office

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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/The-Obama-Moratorium-No-offshore-drilling-while-hes-in-office-87246077.html

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2468252/posts?page=2

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...The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two "thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Sixty percent also believe that gas and oil prices will drop if the government allows offshore drilling, opening up an estimate 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas

On July 14, 2008 President George W. Bush lifted an executive ban on Outer Continental Shelf leasing. On October 1, 2008, in a bipartisan agreement, Congress lifted another longstanding ban on new oil and gas leasing in the OCS.

Drilling was supposed to begin this July. But Salazar said he intends to discard the 2010-2015 lease plan developed by the Bush administration in favor of a new plan that won’t even go into effect until 2012. ...

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[+3] - Thomas - 03/10/2010The title of your thread is misleading: No [i]new[/i] offshore drilling is very different from [i]no[/i] offshore drilling -- which Obama is actually enacting.

@gungasnake,

This is just as stupid a reason s Georgie Bush's adventure into Iraq. (which, by the way, was the impetus for the all time high prices for petroleum)

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@gungasnake,

The title of your thread is misleading: No new offshore drilling is very different from no offshore drilling -- which Obama is actually enacting.

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Here's a more comprehensive report of what Salazar said and what his and the administration's intentions are.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/84781-salazar-eyes-sequential-offshore-drilling-plans

Salazar eyes sequential offshore drilling plans
By Ben Geman - 03/03/10 02:07 PM ET

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar dropped some hints Wednesday about his long-awaited policy on offshore oil-and-gas drilling in federal waters, which he hopes to announce later this month.

Salazar said Interior’s next five-year offshore leasing plan will run from 2012-2017, rather than upending the current 2007-2012 program.

That’s interesting because the Bush administration, on its way out the door, had proposed a draft 2010-2015 plan that would promote oil-and-gas development in large areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts (among other expansions).

Those regions had been off-limits until Congress allowed longstanding drilling bans to lapse in 2008 during a frenzied election-year debate over energy prices.

Nobody expected Salazar to adopt the Bush-era proposal whole cloth. But it had been unclear whether he would seek to modify it, or allow the current plan to run its course before a new lease sale schedule begins.

The White House has signaled that it is open to expanded offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy and climate package. Salazar’s upcoming announcement could tip the administration’s hand to some degree about what new areas it may be willing to consider.

But questions also remain about the remainder of the current 2007-2012 leasing schedule. A federal appeals court last year found that Interior botched a key environmental analysis when crafting the 2007-2012 plan and ordered a revised study.

The case concerns oil-and-gas leasing in waters off Alaska’s coast. Interior’s court-ordered reanalysis is ongoing.

Another big question is whether Salazar will proceed next year with a lease sale off Virginia’s coast.

Salazar spoke to reporters Wednesday after appearing at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to discuss Interior's budget.

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@Butrflynet,

Quote:

Those regions had been off-limits until Congress allowed longstanding drilling bans to lapse in 2008 during a frenzied election-year debate over energy prices.

What actually happened was that oil had reach something like 140 usd a barrel if memory serves, and gasoline was selling for 4.50 a gallon and the US economy was spiralling into total shutdown, and then W. said a couple of words about drilling offshore and that knocked twenty bucks off the price of a barrel of oil the next morning. That was the last previous time when the government was under adult supervision of course.

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