Obama administration reverses course on Atlantic oil drilling
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Interior Sally Jewell testified on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 9. In a major reversal, the Obama administration today said it will not allow oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
WASHINGTON » In a major reversal, the Obama administration said today it will bar oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, a move cheered by environmentalists and consistent with the president’s aggressive steps to combat climate change.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the decision “protects the Atlantic for future generations.” Officials listened to thousands of people in coastal communities from Florida to New England who said, “Now is not the time to start leasing (for oil) off the Atlantic Coast,” Jewell said.
The decision reverses a proposal made last year in which the administration floated a plan that would have opened up a broad swath of the Atlantic Coast to drilling. The January 2015 proposal would have opened up sites more than 50 miles off Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia to oil drilling no earlier than 2021.
The decision comes as President Barack Obama, in his final year in office, continues to build an environmental legacy that includes a global agreement to curb climate change and an ambitious plan to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The drilling ban is likely to become an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. Both Democratic candidates oppose drilling in the Atlantic, while Republicans vow to expand drilling.
Environmental groups hailed the decision. A coalition of groups that oppose Atlantic drilling had organized protests and petitions in affected states, often running into opposition from governors and other political leaders that support drilling. Republican governors in North and South Carolina back drilling off their states’ coasts, as does the Democratic governor of Virginia and the state’s two Democratic senators.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with top news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
“President Obama has taken a giant step for our oceans, for coastal economies and for mitigating climate change,” said Jacqueline Savitz, vice president of Oceana, an environmental group. “This is a victory for people over politics and shows the importance of old-fashioned grassroots organizing.”
The oil and gas industry has pushed for Atlantic drilling and pledged that exploration would be done safely, with lessons applied from the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Today’s decision “appeases extremists who seek to stop oil and natural gas production” in the U.S., said Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying group. The plan will increase energy costs for Americans and close the door for years on efforts to create new jobs, new investments and boost energy security, Gerard said.
The Pentagon said Atlantic offshore drilling could hurt military maneuvers and interfere with missile tests the Navy relies on to protect the East Coast.
The Pentagon submitted a report to Interior that identified locations in Virginia and other states where military readiness programs would conflict with oil and gas activities, said spokesman Matthew Allen. Ensuring the safety of service members and the public during military training and testing activities is “of key importance,” Allen said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who supports offshore drilling, said he was surprised at the Pentagon’s objections, which were not raised when the draft proposal was submitted last year.
The Pentagon “has been relatively quiet during this public debate and has never shared their objections with me before,” said Kaine, a former Virginia governor who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he was extremely disappointed by the decision and that it effectively ended debate over offshore drilling before it even starts.
Obama found an unlikely ally in Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., a former governor who opposes Atlantic drilling and led a bipartisan effort to stop it.
“This is fantastic news for the coast of South Carolina,” Sanford said. “Residents along our coast should be proud of the way they united on this issue and sent a compelling message to Washington.”
Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C. whose district includes Myrtle Beach, the heart of the state’s $19 billion tourism industry, said the decision was not surprising. “As more and more recoverable oil has been located onshore due to advancing technology” such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, “tapping new reserves in the Atlantic has become less and less feasible,” Rice said.
The drilling plan announced today covers potential lease sales from 2017 to 2022 and calls for leasing 10 areas in the Gulf of Mexico — long the epicenter of U.S. offshore oil production — and three off the Alaska coast.
The Interior Department estimates there are 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic’s outer continental shelf and 31.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Energy industry experts say the reserves may be far greater.
Associated Press writer Bruce Smith in Charleston, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
17 responses to “Obama administration reverses course on Atlantic oil drilling”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
…and how many more companies will go out or business and how many more Americans will lose jobs before Obama is out of office?
Tell me, has the unemployment rate gone up along with the bankruptcy rate? Or have they gone down?
Furthermore, tell me, have boomers been retiring in literally tens of millions compared to 2008 when the economy was so bad that tens of millions who could have retired did not because of financial insecurity?
You also don’t seem to get that the biggest beneficiaries of a ban on gas and oil drilling…is the gas and oil drilling industry who’s being decimated by an oversupply of oil. Reduction in production decreases supply increasing price and putting many back into the black. This massive glut of oil is depressing prices and forcing consolidations and bankruptcies.
Oil prices will go up dramatically when the glut subsides. It will take some time to get the oil rigs back and finding oil workers. If you believe Obama/BLS unemployment numbers where will the workers come from?
Except that the oil firms will not commit the money when the price of oil is unstable for years. Firms don’t just toss billions at investment without at least a decent projection on where prices are going to be. Furthermore, the return of Iran to the oil markets along with a slower growing China will both depress prices for years out. Just because oil prices will come back at SOME point doesn’t mean the firms will just automatically invest.
That isn’t how private business works.
When oil prices are stable and trending upward money will be committed. China is still growing as is India. Keep an eye on the futures prices. The cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. Demand is going up while supply is leveling off. Low energy prices have saved Obama’s economy. Iran will need time to bring back their oil industry and Saudi has peaked.
China’s growth is heading to 6% and staying there.
And Iran is going to be adding half a million barrels in production alone, not to mention the huge amount it has sitting in tankers and containers. It will take us somewhere between 18-36 months to burn through the absurd amount of surplus lying around. Low energy prices have boosted non-petro economies across the globe. Japan would be in real trouble without cheap oil and cheap gas. The EU would be in much worse shape. It’s not all about the US.
At least you agree with me that prices will only go up as supply decreases and that will take a considerable amount of time.
Nothing wrong with 6% growth in China. That’s a lot of oil consumption. Current world oil demand 96.74 mb/d and supply 97.23 mb/d. Reference..https://www.iea.org/oilmarketreport/omrpublic/ Will be interesting to see what happens as prices increase.. Folks with the power will attempt to keep prices low until the election is over. Since you agree with me that prices will go up. I think they will also go up faster based on increase in demand
Well, he STILL won’t get to fill the supreme court position.
“Republican Job Killers: Obstructing Obama from reducing unemployment!”
I will not be surprised if the Chinese start drilling where Obama will not permit US companies to drill. The area is within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone but in international waters, so what would stop the Chinese from drilling there? .
I don’t know, your complete failure to understand what an EEZ is?
Also, there’s this thing called “cost.”
Cost won’t be a problem when crude oil approaches $100 a barrel. So for now we just sit tight and import cheap foreign oil.
API
Crude build 1.5 mill
Gas draw 1.2 mill
Dist draw 830k
Cushing build 471k
Do you have any idea how much it will cost to send a rig into a foreign EEZ against their will and then supply and move oil from it?
Supply and demand. If it is profitable it will be done. Of course I don’t know what it will cost. If you know let me know.
China’s oil firms, especially off shore rigs have been close to shore because China can use state owned firms to supply goods and move oil back to refineries. Having a rig an entire ocean away with no close supply network means have to hire out entire new staffs, lug an entire rig across two oceans and get up supply rigs and hire third party shippers to move the oil.
That makes NO sense to do that when they could throw that money at the Spratleys and drill much closer to home with far more rigs.
For all of you “pro-business” Republicans, it is amazing how little you understand of anything remotely related to business.
My comments are not meant that China will drill but that American companies will drill when the price is right. President Obama said we couldn’t drill our way to lower gas prices. He was wrong. “From 2008 through 2014 (the most recent year for which data is available), world oil production increased by 6.686 million barrels per day. 6.491 million barrels per day of that increase came from the U.S. and Canada. In fact, 5.457 million barrels a day, or 82 percent, came from the U.S. alone.” (The American Energy Alliance, 2/25/16)