Secretary Salazar Announces Comprehensive Strategy for Offshore Oil and Gas Development and Exploration
http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/2010_03_31_release.cfm
03/31/201
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that, as part of a comprehensive strategy for strengthening the nation’s energy security and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, the Obama Administration will expand oil and gas development and exploration on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, while protecting fisheries, tourism, and places off U.S. coasts that are not appropriate for development.
“By responsibly expanding conventional energy development and exploration here at home we can strengthen our energy security, create jobs, and help rebuild our economy,” said Salazar, who joined President Obama at Andrews Air Force Base to make the announcement. “Our strategy calls for developing new areas offshore, exploring frontier areas, and protecting places that are too special to drill. By providing order and certainty to offshore exploration and development and ensuring we are drilling in the right ways and the right places, we are opening a new chapter for balanced and responsible oil and gas development here at home.”
The Administration’s strategy calls for: developing oil and gas resources in new areas, such as the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, more than 125 miles from Florida’s coast; increasing oil and gas exploration in frontier areas, such as the Arctic Ocean and the Mid and South Atlantic Ocean; and protecting ocean areas that are simply too special to drill, such as Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
The strategy will guide the current 2007-2012 offshore oil and gas leasing program, which was written by the previous administration but found by the courts last year to be legally flawed, as well as the new 2012-2017 program that this administration will propose.