Obama to expand drilling
Lease sales for areas off Alaska coast would be first since 2008
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration cautiously offered up more areas in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coast to oil and gas drilling Tuesday but didn’t go far enough to satisfy Republicans pushing to greatly expand drilling as a way to create jobs and wean the country off foreign oil.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled a proposal to hold 15 lease sales for areas in the Gulf of Mexico, including two in the eastern Gulf, and three off Alaska’s coast from 2012 to 2017.
The sales off Alaska, where native groups and environmentalists have objected to drilling, would be the first since 2008.
They would be held late in the five-year time frame to allow for scientific evaluations in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, which Interior officials called a “frontier” for drilling. And they would be targeted to avoid areas with cultural and environmental sensitivities, officials said.
“The approach we are taking there is a cautious one,” Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said of the Arctic leases. “We are aware of the substantial issues associated with major production.”
In the western and central Gulf, by contrast, the proposal puts all unleased acreage up for sale. There, drilling is more commonplace, infrastructure is well developed and spill response plans have improved since the Gulf oil spill disaster in 2010.
The drilling plans are the latest iteration of President Barack Obama’s strategy for energy production, which has continually shifted to account for political realities, high gasoline prices and environmental disasters such as last year’s Gulf oil spill.
Weeks before that disaster, the White House had talked of expanding offshore drilling off Alaska, in the Atlantic and throughout the eastern Gulf, in part to help move stalled climate-change legislation through Congress. It pulled back late last year after the blowout of BP’s Macondo well caused the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
In May, with Republicans in Congress passing bills to speed up and expand offshore drilling and with the public outraged over high gasoline prices, Obama directed his administration to extend existing leases and to hold more frequent sales in the federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to boost oil production.
Tuesday’s proposal goes slightly further by putting parts of the Cook Inlet and Chukchi and Beaufort seas back up for sale. President George W. Bush had opened up those areas for drilling in 2008 as part of a proposal that included drilling off the West and East coasts, and in the eastern Gulf.
Obama scrapped drilling off Virginia in early 2010, barred drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and never considered drilling off the Pacific coast, where opposition is widespread.
In addition to the Gulf and the Alaska leases, the proposal includes a sliver in the eastern Gulf about 150 miles off the Florida coast. The rest of the eastern Gulf is off limits due to a congressional moratorium.
The plan falls well short of proposals passed in the House and touted by Republicans running for president, who want to vastly expand drilling. They have accused the president of stifling American energy.