Posted on 02/25/2009 7:20:21 PM PST by thackney
Shell Oil Co.'s chief executive for North America, Marvin Odum, complained today that regulatory red tape has slowed the company's $2 billion investment in offshore leases in Alaska.
Coordination among government agencies overseeing offshore drilling has been "clumsy" in Alaska, Odum suggested after his testimony at a House of Representatives panel examining issues related to drilling in the outer continental shelf. When new areas are open to exploration, the federal government needs to make sure the regulatory agencies have adequate resources to handle the demands of the companies who've been awarded the leases, Odum said.
"Getting that done, the permits coordinated, different facets of government working together, I think has been a little bit clumsy and challenging as we enter a new area. So mine is simply a flag that says, here's an opportunity to learn from what's happened in just the last couple of years. In the spirit of good government, let's look for a way to do it even more efficiently as we move into new areas."
"It's not a streamlining issue, it's more all the agencies of government working in a coordinated fashion," Odum added. "Some of it's taken longer than it might have otherwise, and I just see opportunities. It's the same look I take in my own company all the time, which is, 'How do I make us more effective and efficient, the way we work as a company?' "
Shell returned to Alaska in 2005, when the company won offshore leases offered for sale by the federal Minerals Management Service. Since then, the company has spent about $2 billion on leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, Odum said. But in that time, the company has faced regulatory and legal hurdles and so far hasn't drilled a single exploratory well, Odum said.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Preemptive effort to fix the Governor’s wagon before 2012, underway.
Realistically, nothing is going to improve for the companies. It’s too bad, but that is what the voters imposed on themselves.
Read it again. This is a complaint about the FEDERAL agencies.
The chief reason why the nation’s economy is in the sh*tter - and the reason that no “stimulus” package will ever succeed in fixing the economy - is excess government regulation of businesses both large and small. Until this problem is addressed and fixed, America’s economy will continue to slide; and no socialist government in the history of Mankind ever deregulated anything. Which is why the United States is screwed. Our government Masters, the nation’s commissars, refuse to stand back, relinquish control of literally everything under the sun, and let the people go about their affairs unimpeded by our legions of government an*l-retentives. If they were ever to allow such a thing, the heads of all congressmen and women would probably explode, and Obama’s whole trip would instantly become redundant.
US Interior secretary scraps oil-shale leasing
Take THAT Shell!
The Chicago's Patronage knows so much more about oil production.
If U.S. domestic supplies were tapped — and in particular the oil shales, the world price for oil could be kept at about $40/bbl for a long time.
By locking up the oil-shales, and other domestic supplies — the government (Obama, Pelosi, Reid — just to personalize things, according to Akinsky's Rules) has removed all protection from the U.S. consumer & guaranteed that the U.S. economy will bleed money, when the price of oil goes up.
The next step on the agenda appears to be shutting down the oil sands in Alberta. The greatest single source of imported oil for the U.S.
While Shell, and other big oil companies would develop the oil shales, if given the chance — they'll also be happy raking in billions of windfall profits from the wells they already have in production.
There's some more discussion about this here:
See here for the real goal.
“...the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said that offshore development is a “complex, multisided issue.”
Gee. Does anyone think THIS DEMOCRAT from COAL country has a conflict of interest here?
;^P
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