Oil industry slams ‘restrictive’ offshore drilling plan

The oil industry is criticizing the Obama administration’s offshore oil and gas drilling plan for closing off about 87 percent of the potential drilling areas.

While the main oil lobbying groups are glad that the Interior Department is planning to lease drilling rights on the southern Atlantic coast, they’re disappointed that the entire Pacific coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and much of the water around Alaska is still off-limits.

{mosads}“Studies show we could create 840,000 new jobs and raise more than $200 billion for the government if oil and natural gas development is allowed in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico,” Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told reporters Monday.

“By ignoring the latter two areas, the administration has already turned its back on most of those jobs.”

Interior’s planning for the 2017-2022 offshore leasing plan has the potential to make the United States an energy leader for years to come, Gerard said.

“But the opportunity could slip through our fingers if the government keeps 87 percent of offshore waters closed to oil and natural gas leasing,” he said.

Gerard’s statements came the same day Interior is kicking off a series of public forums to gather input on the plan, starting in Anchorage, Alaska, and Washington, D.C.

Gerard and other oil industry leaders said they were concerned that, while Interior’s plan is just a draft, the agency will not consider lease sales that are not in the draft.

The plan “slams the door on industry and new jobs, increased economic activity, added revenue and strengthened energy security that exploration and development of other new offshore areas would provide for America,” said Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore drillers.

Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said closing off significant portions of the outer continental shelf means that the industry will never know the potential oil and gas that could be recovered there.

“Opening these areas for exploration would provide us with much-needed knowledge,” he said. “Today, we don’t know the extent of what resources lie beneath those waters, and as Americans, all of us own those resources and deserve the right to know and to use sound science to make sure that we know the full potential of our offshore oil and gas reserves.”

The associations said they would continue to push Interior to open more areas for exploration, even though they were excluded from the draft plan.

The industry groups, among others, asked Interior in August to consider all areas for drilling and not prematurely exclude any area from the plan without knowing its potential.