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Study: Atlantic drilling could give economy $23.5B boost
Fuel Fix ^ | December 5, 2013 | Jennifer A. Dlouhy

Posted on 12/08/2013 5:54:25 AM PST by thackney

If companies were allowed to drill for oil and gas in Atlantic waters off the East Coast, the work would help create nearly 280,000 new jobs and contribute some $23.5 billion to the U.S. economy each year by 2035, according to a study unveiled Thursday by two industry trade groups.

The report by Sugar Land, Texas-based Quest Offshore Inc. also projects that the activity could yield 1.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, based on current estimates of the amount of crude and natural gas lurking along the East Coast.

Commissioned by the National Ocean Industries Association and the American Petroleum Institute, the study represents the oil industry’s latest bid to convince the Obama administration to make plans for auctioning offshore drilling leases in Atlantic waters beginning as soon as 2017.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management soon will begin the long process of developing a schedule for selling outer continental shelf drilling leases from Aug. 27, 2017 through mid-2022 – and the oil industry wants to make sure the Atlantic acreage isn’t left out.

“The key is getting Atlantic lease sales included in the 2017-2022 offshore leasing plan,” said Randall Luthi, head of the National Ocean Industries Association. “None of the benefits shown in the study can be realized without actual sales.”

Luthi likened expanded offshore energy development to a “silver bullet that will decrease unemployment, increase federal revenue without raising taxes, and make America more energy secure.”

And Erik Milito, the API’s director of upstream and industry operations, called oil and natural gas production off the East Coast “a potential gold mine.”

“Developing oil and natural gas in the Atlantic could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work, make us more energy secure, and bring in needed revenue for the government,” Milito said. “But none of these benefits will appear unless the federal government follows pro-development energy policies.”

Most U.S. offshore oil and gas development is concentrated in the Gulf of Mexico, though some activity continues off the southern California coast and in waters around Alaska.

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 Aug. 26, 2017. In assembling that current sale schedule, Interior Department officials insisted 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.

The last geophysical studies of the area — which formed the basis for some of the resource estimates used in Quest’s report — were conducted decades ago, before advancements in seismic research that allow geologists to get a better look below underground salt layers.

The ocean energy bureau appears likely to broadly approve seismic research in the Atlantic as soon as next January, though industry representatives say that litigation and individual permit reviews mean the geological surveys might not begin for several years.

Although the Quest study predicts that economic benefits from Atlantic oil development would flow well beyond the East Coast, the report finds significant benefits there. For instance, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia would see the largest gain in jobs as a result of the activity, Quest predicted.

“Although some states such as the Carolinas, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York and Maine are expected to see larger benefits, the effects of offshore oil and natural gas activity are expected to be felt all along the Atlantic coast,” the report said. “The nation as a whole, but especially the Atlantic coast states would likely see large employment increases, increased economic activity and increased government revenue as well as increased domestic oil and natural gas production, increasing the nation’s energy security.”

The Quest analysis assumed oil and gas drilling leases would be sold along the mid- and south Atlantic beginning in 2018, with north Atlantic acreage auctioned no sooner than 2020. The analysts assumed industry interest in the Atlantic waters would parallel the activity during other outer continental auctions, with no more than 480 mid- and south Atlantic leases sold annually.

Working under those assumptions, Quest predicted that 69 offshore Atlantic projects would begin oil and natural gas production between 2017 and 2035, with most — 52 — in deep water. The analysts also forecast that oil companies would drill an average of 30 wells in Atlantic waters each year.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: North Carolina; US: South Carolina; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: energy; naturalgas; offshore; oil
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1 posted on 12/08/2013 5:54:25 AM PST by thackney
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To: thackney

Obama has this idea filed under: “Things I must never allow”.


2 posted on 12/08/2013 5:55:44 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: thackney

I see they’re hoping for a business friendly president and congress. I think we’ve seen the last of those.


3 posted on 12/08/2013 5:57:03 AM PST by saganite (What happens to taglines? Is there a termination date?)
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To: thackney

Well, at least this would get the rabid ecowhackos back out of flyover country...


4 posted on 12/08/2013 5:59:10 AM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Smokin' Joe

“If companies were allowed to drill for oil and gas in Atlantic waters off the East Coast, the work would help create nearly 280,000 new jobs and contribute some $23.5 billion to the U.S. economy....”

We certainly can’t have that now, can we? (sarc)


5 posted on 12/08/2013 6:00:30 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: thackney
Cuba is drilling like crazy off their waters.IIRC the Chinese are a big factor in that drilling.IMO Cuba + China = the likelihood of huge drilling catastrophes.With that in mind there's really no reason *not* to drill all around Florida as well as off the Georgia coast and the Carolinas.
6 posted on 12/08/2013 6:01:57 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Osama Obama Care: A Religion That Will Have You On Your Knees!)
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To: thackney

Atlantic? Heck, there is a lake of oil just off the coast of Santa Barbara.

But the wealthy lefties who live up there don’t want their million dollar views of the Pacific Ocean spoiled with oil rigs.


7 posted on 12/08/2013 6:03:20 AM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: thackney

With our current “leadership,” it’s probably going to cost us over $23.5B and we won’t see anything from that drilling because some foreign country will be doing it with our money.

(Not to sound pessimistic or anything lol)


8 posted on 12/08/2013 6:04:18 AM PST by Patriot95
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To: thackney

23 billion? Just enough for another war in the ME.


9 posted on 12/08/2013 6:05:58 AM PST by count-your-change (you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough)
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To: Progov
A proposed on shore well not far from where I grew up was scuttled by the ravings of the environmentalists out of DC almost 30 years ago.

People with interest in local fisheries (it is in the tidewater MD/VA area) who had contacted me asked what they should do because environmental groups were soliciting their support in opposing drilling. Iknew of the one well which had been drilled, and I told them to go out to the location check it out (the well had been plugged and abandoned, the site reclaimed). When they finally found the dry hole marker in the meadow, they refused to object to the drilling program, because, as they put it, "things were being done right".

Still, the environmentalists prevailed.

Had the project continued and been successful, the whole DC Metro area could have been heating with natural gas instead of fuel oil or electricity for the past 30 years.

Nope, can't have stuff like that.

10 posted on 12/08/2013 6:19:16 AM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: thackney
Study: Atlantic drilling could give economy $23.5B boost

That's about the additional amount CGI Federal will need to fix the Obamacare website.......

11 posted on 12/08/2013 6:31:41 AM PST by varon (Para bellum)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Let’s go for lower gas prices!


12 posted on 12/08/2013 6:32:25 AM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation
Energy independence.

 photo VMSSIGN800DOTS_01.jpg

13 posted on 12/08/2013 6:42:57 AM PST by BobP (The piss-stream media - Never to be watched again in my house)
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To: thackney

Obama: can we get back to killing bald eagles? We’re good at that.


14 posted on 12/08/2013 7:19:51 AM PST by cicero2k
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To: thackney

It’ll just run the guvmint twenty days.


15 posted on 12/08/2013 7:25:09 AM PST by SkyDancer (Live your life in such a way that the Westboro church will want to picket your funeral.)
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To: BobP

That’s Cheyenne Mountain in the background, isn’t it?


16 posted on 12/08/2013 7:30:05 AM PST by Ken522
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To: thackney

$23.5B? I think that drilling off New England would help the economy of those states. But then again, except for Maine and New Hampshire (at this time) it will never happen, because of Liberals.


17 posted on 12/08/2013 7:32:37 AM PST by ExCTCitizen (Ben Carson/Rand Paul or Sara/Nikki in 2016)
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To: thackney

Tell me again why a windmill off the cost is ascetically more pleasing than an oil well?


18 posted on 12/08/2013 7:32:38 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: thackney
Interior Department officials insisted 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.

Is it standard procedure to do multiple surveys before any bidding is scheduled?

19 posted on 12/08/2013 8:35:00 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
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To: thackney

In assembling that current sale schedule, Interior Department officials insisted 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.

This is like someone saying, “you take the car in,
pay to have it checked out, and if it’s good, we’ll tell you how much we want for it”.


20 posted on 12/08/2013 9:56:27 AM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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