Obama continues policy of artificial scarcity with Atlantic drilling ban

Fuel Fix:

Energy industry leaders are fretting that it could be a decade before the federal government allows them to hunt for oil and gas along the East Coast, unless the Obama administration shifts its approach to offshore drilling.

Although the federal waters of the Atlantic Ocean are technically open for oil exploration, drilling leases must be sold in government auctions, and none of those sales are planned for the area under a schedule that runs through mid-August 2017.

With the Interior Department poised to soon begin the long process of drafting the next five-year sale schedule spanning 2017 to 2022, oil industry representatives are imploring the administration to keep the door open to Atlantic auctions.

“Let’s continue to allow opportunities and provide opportunities to at least explore and see what’s actually out there,” said Erik Milito, upstream director for the American Petroleum Institute.

In assembling the current sale schedule, Interior Department officials insisted that private companies should first conduct geophysical research to get a sense of the area’s potential oil and gas resources before the government makes any leasing decisions or schedules sales. But industry representatives worry that sticking to that same approach for the 2017-2022 schedule would likely foreclose Atlantic auctions for that time period too.

Their concerns are wedded to one hard reality: Under federal law, if a potential offshore lease sale doesn’t make it into the five-year plan, it can’t happen.
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This administration has operated with bad faith when it comes to offshore drilling in most federally controlled sites.  It is still using the BP spill from years ago as an excuse that prevents drilling on both the East and West coasts.  They are letting the carbon phobic left drive the decision making process.