Monday, July 21, 2008
OCS Issue on the Move
Posted by Scuttlebutt on Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation have long called for lifting the ban on oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), but now that a sitting president, GOP presidential candidate and a top federal agency have joined the push, the issue is gaining new momentum.
The United States is the only country that has closed more than 80 percent of its outer continental shelf to drilling. Outdated estimates, last assessed in the late 1980s, assume there are as much as 18 billion barrels of untapped oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off U.S. coastlines. President George W. Bush has requested that Congress open up OCS area in the Gulf of Mexico to drilling, fresh on the heels of his decision to remove an executive prohibition — issued through his own office — on similar exploration. Generations of Louisiana lawmakers have filed legislation to lift the statutory ban, but have been unable to make any headway. The GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, has advocated increased OCS energy production. McCain says he does not support drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrat Party’s assumed nominee, has said little about the expansion of OCS drilling. Obama’s campaign planks focus instead on reducing oil consumption, retooling fuel-economy standards and creating new tax breaks. — Jeremy Alford
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