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Obama to pursue expanded offshore oil drilling
Reuters - Thursday, April 1
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By Steve Holland and Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will announce on Wednesday he will stick with a Bush era plan to drill oil and natural gas off the coast of Virginia but will not pursue energy development in waters off the U.S. Northeast and the West Coast that were recently opened to drilling.
Obama, who wants Congress to move a stalled climate change bill, has sought to reach out to Republicans by signalling he is open to allowing offshore drilling, providing coastlines are protected. Allowing offshore drilling would also create jobs and reduce U.S. long-term dependence on foreign oil.
Joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Obama is to detail an updated plan for offshore oil and natural gas development in remarks at a military base in nearby Maryland.
For more than 20 years, drilling was banned in most offshore areas of the United States outside the Gulf of Mexico because of concerns that spills could harm the environment.
The administration has been weighing the pros and cons of offshore drilling since it took office and put the brakes on a Bush-era proposal which called for drilling along the East Coast and off the coast of California.
An Interior Department official said the department will conduct the first new offshore oil and gas sale in the Atlantic Ocean in over two decades as part of a lease sale 50 miles off the coast of Virginia.
The plan is to stick with the Bush administration's goal to hold that Virginia lease sale in November 2011, but the official said that might be delayed by a few months at the most if required environmental reviews are not finished in time.
The proposed Virginia lease area may hold 130 million barrels of oil and 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, based on Interior Department estimates.
For the new 2012-2017 offshore drilling plan that will be developed by the Obama administration, the goal is to lease more areas in the mid-Atlantic and new areas in the south Atlantic and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida, the Interior official said.
Drilling also would be allowed off Florida's Gulf Coast, but not within 125 miles of the state's shoreline, as current laws require.
Leasing in those new offshore areas is dependent on public approval and if it can be proven that drilling won't harm the environment.
Seismic exploration in the south Atlantic and mid-Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf of the United States will determine the quantity and location of potential oil and gas resources to support energy planning.
President Obama will not issue an executive order banning drilling off the West Coast or in U.S. Northeast waters, but those areas won't be considered in the next 5-year drilling plan, the official plan.
That will still allow future presidents, if they chose, to develop energy resources in those offshore areas, the official said.
In addition, the Interior Department will continue lease sales in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico, which have proved to have sizable reserves.
ALASKA LEASE PROPOSALS Cancelled
Proposed oil and gas leasing in Alaska's Bristol Bay will be cancelled out of concern for protecting sensitive areas of the Outer Continental Shelf from environmental dangers.
This could affect companies like Royal Dutch Shell which has expressed interest in the region, as well as ConocoPhillips, BP and Statoil.
Four pending lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in North Alaska will be cancelled and those areas reserved for future scientific research to determine if they are suitable for further leasing. At the same time, a previously scheduled lease sale in Alaska's Cook Inlet will proceed.
Congress allowed a prohibition on offshore drilling to expire in 2008 and former President George W. Bush lifted a drilling moratorium that year. Environmental groups and some lawmakers continue to raise concerns about the impact increased drilling would have on coastal areas.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the U.S. Atlantic coast waters may hold 37 trillion cubic feet of gas and nearly 4 billion barrels of oil, while the Pacific Coast has 10.5 billion barrels of oil and 18 trillion cubic feet of gas.
To put that in context, the United States imports about 2 billion barrels of oil a year from OPEC nations and is expected to import 2.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from all sources this year, according to the Energy Department.
Also to be announced is that the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department will sign a joint final rule on Thursday establishing greenhouse gas emission standards and corporate average fuel economy standards for light-duty vehicles for model years 2012-2016.
Obama will announce that 5,603 new hybrid cars and trucks have been ordered to convert the federal fleet to one of greater fuel efficiency.
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