Posted on 04/29/2006 5:51:30 PM PDT by I got the rope
The Bush administration yesterday moved to open an area off Florida’s coast to oil and gas drilling after an aggressive lobbying push by energy companies and industries that are crimped by high fuel costs.
The Interior Department’s draft five-year plan, which would set federal oil and gas policy from 2007 to 2012, would open 2 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, part of an area known as Lease 181, if approved.
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat running for reelection, criticized the plan, saying if it would amount to the “largest expansion of drilling off Florida’s coast in the country’s history.”
But business groups welcomed the effort, as they called on both the administration and Congress to open a wider swath of seabed to oil and gas producers to ease an energy crunch.
“The five-year proposed program recognizes that the nation must expand the development of offshore energy resources,” said Mike Linn, the chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Interior’s plan would also study reserves off the coast of Virginia. Lawmakers in that state have expressed interest in getting out of a federal ban on drilling for a chunk of oil and gas royalties. The plan also calls for further study of an area south of Lease 181, a wide swath in the eastern Gulf.
The plan would prohibit drilling within 100 miles of Florida’s coast, to minimize the potential damage of an oil spill.
Before the release of the Interior plan, four members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, two Republicans and two Democrats, introduced a bill to direct Interior to allow drilling in Lease 181.
Sens. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), respectively the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and by Sens. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) introduced the bill.
It would open around 4 million acres in the Gulf to drilling, or roughly twice the amount Interior’s plan suggests.
Both the bill and the draft Interior plan come after coordinated, years-long lobbying to push the government to open new areas to drilling, as prices for oil and natural gas have risen sharply.
Natural gas prices are triple what they were in the late 1990s, and manufacturers say they have lost thousands of jobs as companies moved operations overseas where fuel prices were lower.
The warm winter has lowered prices for natural gas from the record heights reached immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
But chemical and agribusiness companies continue to press Congress and the administration to allow new drilling.
Chemical-company executives met with Congress members last week and urged them to adopt pro-production policies that would increase natural gas supplies. The American Chemistry Council, the main trade group for the chemical and plastics industries, estimates that as many as 100,000 jobs have been shifted overseas because of the relatively high fuel costs over the past four years.
The area marked for new drilling is expected to have an estimated 5 trillion cubic feet of natural-gas reserves, enough to heat 5 million homes for 15 years, according to the American Gas Association.
But while drilling supporters seem to have momentum, lobbyists acknowledge that opening new areas to drilling remains an uphill battle, especially in an election year when neither party is eager to take steps that could motivate the opposition.
Nelson said he believed that he and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who has opposed other efforts to open Lease 181 to drilling, could block the bill.
Lease 181 does not fall under the federal moratoriums on oil and gas drilling in effect for most of the nation’s coastline.
The Domenici-Bingaman bill requires that drilling be allowed there within a year of enactment. It likely would lead to drilling more quickly than the administration could act on its own.
Paul Cicio, executive director of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, said Lease 181 offered the country’s “greatest near-term supply option” because of its closeness to existing production infrastructure farther west in the Gulf along Louisiana’s and Texas’s coastlines, where much of the nation’s energy infrastructure is located.
The group also plans a fly-in day with some of its members next week.
Jack Gerard, president of the ACC, called the Domenici-Bingaman bill a step in the right direction, but he also said additional measures would be needed to cut prices for natural gas.
Gas prices have fallen since the hurricanes, which did widespread damage to energy facilities in the Gulf coast, but Domenici noted that prices have climbed steadily since 2000.
“This bill will make a real difference in the prices people pay to heat their homes and run their businesses,” Domenici said.
While a great portion of the country’s supply of natural gas is devoted to providing electricity and heat to homes, chemical and fertilizer companies have been particularly aggressive in their push for allowing more drilling because they rely on natural gas as a feedstock for their products.
The affect on agriculture in particular has increased support for more drilling from members from the Midwest.
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged energy production and distribution facilities along the Gulf Coast, natural-gas prices shot higher than $15 per million Btu. Those prices are now around $8 per million Btu, still three times the market price for the fuel in the late 1990s.
Florida’s senators and most of its House members have opposed previous efforts to open Lease 181, fearing that a drilling accident could dump a gooey black mess on the state’s shoreline and hurt the state’s lucrative tourism industry.
Nelson and Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican, have introduced a measure that would open up a smaller sliver of the Gulf “far off the state’s coast,” according to a news release.
The Domenici-Bingaman bill would allow drilling 100 miles off the Florida shoreline. Nelson and Martinez’s bill would push it to 260 miles, and it would permanently ban drilling in Lease 181.
One lobbyist for the chemical industry estimated that the Nelson-Martinez bill would produce about one-sixth the gas that the Domenici-Bingaman bill would.
But the lobbyist acknowledged that warm weather hasn’t helped his cause. Pro-drilling lobbyists had hoped a cold spell would have brought another constituency to the cause: homeowners livid at their high heating costs.
Instead, the United States had its warmest January on record. The average temperature of 39.5 degrees last month was 8.5 degrees higher than the mean temperature for January, using data collected from 1895 to 2005, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which keeps track of weather data.
Patently false. His opposition doesn't help, but it's irrelevant. If he was all for it, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
(I love FReeRepublic!)
Note to this idiot: that's already happening. Just ask Castro. Nelson needs to shut up and realize that oil will be drilled for off our coasts, whether his NIMBY self would like it or not. The only question is whether other countries do it or whether we do it.
That's criticism???
That wimp was tittering about illegals a couple of weeks back and wants in state tuition for children of illegals.
I hope Jeb Bush is unhappy for a long time. I also hope his current job is his last job in politics.
OK, let's see if it happens. I predict it will not, the sheeple have been conditioned by the MSM to be "environmentally sensitive" - and that means no oil drilling. they won't wake up. these people think electricity just comes out of the wall.
premium is already $3.50 here in NY.
Yes, production from Florida's side of the Gulf should be able to leverage at least some of the western Gulf's infrastructure.
Also, there's been talk about new nuclear capability in Florida, though I don't believe that anything has been submitted to the NRC yet. Here is the NRC's January 2006 list of expected licensing activities over the next few years:
| FY 2006 | FY 2007 | FY 2008 |
|---|---|---|
| Complete 3 ESPs North Anna Clinton Grand Gulf |
||
| Start Southern (Vogtle) ESP | Continue Southern ESP | Continue Southern ESP |
| DC pre-application activities for EPR, PBMR, ACR, and IRIS | DC pre-application activities for EPR, PBMR, ACR, and IRIS | DC pre-application activities for EPR, PBMR, ACR, and IRIS |
| Continue ESBWR DC | Continue ESBWR DC | Continue ESBWR DC |
| Start EPR DC | ||
| Start PBMR DC | ||
| Pre-application activities for 11 potential COL applicants | Pre-application activities for 11 potential COL applicants | Pre-application activities for 11 potential COL applicants |
| Start Dominion (North Anna) COL | Continue Dominion COL | |
| Start South Carolina E&G COL | Continue SC E&G COL | |
| Start Duke COL | ||
| Start NuStart 1 (Bellefonte) COL | ||
| Start NuStart 2 (Grand Gulf) COL | ||
| Start Southern (Vogtle) COL | ||
| Start Constellation COL | ||
| Start Progress Energy (Harris) COL | ||
| Start Progress Energy (Florida) COL | ||
| Start Entergy (River Bend) COL | ||
| Regulatory Infrastructure Development and Technical Development | Regulatory Infrastructure Development and Technical Development | Regulatory Infrastructure Development and Technical Development |
| Start NGNP interactions with DOE | Continue NGNP interactions with DOE | Submit Joint NGNP licensing strategy to Congress |
| * Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR), Advanced Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) Reactor (ACR), and International Reactor Innovative and Secure (IRIS)Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) Department of Energy (DOE) | ||
Hoo boy! That cartoon is priceless!! I hope I see it regularly on all the "alternative energy" pipedream threads on FR from now on!!!
Seems most Florida residents are pretty much satisfied with their Governor. I'm sure he won't loose any sleep even if he knew you weren't. As for whether this is the end of his political career or not remains to be seen.
Nope, not a bit. Like I've said for a long time, it's a good deal if you can get it. Put a few bucks in a sports deal, get the taxpayers to pay for it and check out with millions after putting pennies in. The whole Bush family has made a lot of money off their power and connections for decades. Hey, good for them. I'm impressed by people that have become rich because people gave them the money. I had to make my money on my own. How about you?
The plan would prohibit drilling within 100 miles of Florida’s coast, to minimize the potential damage ofan oil spillgetting on the wrong side of Katherine Harris and Mel Martinez.
They don't want the tourists to see any oil wells.
Actually, it's about time. Or maybe 30 years too late.
We should have learned in the 1970s that if our economy is going to be based on petroleum, we don't want to be dependent on countries that don't like us to supply us with it.
Yikes... I heard that your state has the most taxes on fuel than any other.
The last time I was on the Gulf Coast it was befouled by red tide. Might as well have been an oil spill, might better have been an oil spill--would have smelled better. Floridians are precious, and stupid, about their lousy beaches.
They can be totally polluted any time by natural causes but let the nation benefit from some oil in the meant time? NO WAY!!
A-holes.
Most State waters extend out 3 miles. (For some reason in Texas I believe they go out 9 miles.) The Federal waters start where the Statge waters end and go out to 200 miles.
However if you are near another country you split the difference. For example another country Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida, we get 45 miles they get 45 miles, so the state waters go out 3 miles from Florida and the Feds go the rest of the way to 45 miles,then you are in Cuban waters.
On Florida's east coast the closeby Bahamas would be a factor. The same consideration has to be given to the Bahamas with the waters between Florida and the Bahamas
Where they think the oil is off Florida, is overwhelmingly in Federal waters out side the State waters.- tom
I know of one permit that has been approved, I did not know all of these were in the works...great post.
It was absolutely disgusting to see the maps of drilling rigs when Florida was whining about fuel shortages after Katrina. The rigs all stop at the border.
Most tourists see blight. I see progress.
You know, I am registered to vote in Florida.
While I'd like to kick out Bill Nelson (D)... the real question is whether the Republican alternative would vote to authorize the drilling.
And after researching the Republicans running for the primary... I don't see any of them supporting oil drilling either.
So what's the point?
Unless something changes, I'll be voting either for either the Libertarian party or the Constitution Party.
You notice there was no mention of refineries...
As people have said, there is no such thing as American oil...This new crude would go into the International market...To sell at 75 bucks a barrel...We already sell (BP sells) the oil that comes down the pipeline from Alaska to China, or Japan or somone over there for 75 bucks a barrel...
There is no shortage of crude, or gasoline and obviously natural gas...Until they start talking refineries, and bringing down the price of gasoline, I'll be convinced this is just a scheme to put more money into the hands of the multi-millionaires...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.