A top House Republican today unveiled a suite of bills that aims to expand offshore drilling by forcing the Obama administration to sell oil and gas leases along the East Coast and more quickly vet proposed drilling projects.
The maneuver by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., seizes on fears that spiking oil prices could constrain the United States’ economic recovery and taps into drilling advocates’ frustration with the pace of the government’s approval of offshore projects in the wake of last year’s Gulf oil spill.
“The majority of Americans support offshore energy production and these bills will allow it to move forward in a safe, responsible and efficient manner,” Hastings said. “With thousands unemployed in the Gulf region and gasoline prices nearing $4 per gallon, swift action must be taken to reverse course and increase U.S. energy production.”
As head of the House Natural Resources Committee, Hastings is in a good position to leverage his legislation through that panel and onto the House floor, where the bills could swiftly get a debate and vote. Hastings’ committee has already held one hearing focusing on the slowdown in Gulf permitting. A second is planned with the nation’s top offshore drilling regulator on Wednesday.
Hastings’ proposals include three measures:
- One, focused on the Gulf of Mexico, would force the Interior Department to act on applications for drilling permits within 30 days of receiving them (although that time window could be extended twice for 15 days). The government would not be forced to approve the permits, but would have to decide whether or not to approve them. The measure also would give the government 30 days to re-permit Gulf drilling projects that had been approved before the administration’s decision to suspend some deep-water exploration last spring. Delays longer than 30 days would stop the clock on time-limited leases associated with permits in limbo. Since Feb. 28, the government has approved six of the 57 deep-water drilling projects that were permitted before that ban was imposed.
- A second bill would force the Obama administration to conduct previously planned oil and natural gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Virginia that were delayed (or crossed off the books) after last year’s spill. For instance, the Interior Department would be required to sell oil and gas leases near the coast of Virginia no later than a year after the measure is signed into law. That’s far earlier than the current timetable, which would rule out a sale until 2017 or later. Three Gulf of Mexico lease sales also would be required under the legislation, including two that were slated to take place this year and may be pushed until 2012 while the government completes an environmental study of the region.
- A third measure would require the government to sell leases in half of the U.S. waters that contain the greatest known oil and natural gas reserves (where there is at least 2.5 billion barrels of oil or 7.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas). Those lease sales would be required under a a five-year blueprint for offshore drilling decisions that the Interior Department is developing now. The legislation also would give state governors the chance to opt in to drilling in nearby federal waters — a decision that would force the Interior Department to include a lease sale for those areas between 2012 and 2017.
Hastings’ bills add to a growing number of measures on Capitol Hill that aim to expand or speed up offshore drilling, despite a recent increase in the government’s processing of deep-water permits.
Gulf Coast lawmakers insist the nation’s energy security and the region’s economy are at stake.
“Drilling rigs are leaving the Gulf of Mexico and setting up shop off the coasts of volatile countries like Libya and Egypt,” said Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La. “What does it tell you that when given a choice between civil war and the president’s energy policy, oil companies are choosing civil war?”
Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said he believed there may be “a deliberate attempt by the administration to allow energy costs to go up in order to meet an ideological goal of shifting (the nation) to alternative fuels.”
Fleming, who is a doctor, said he had diagnosed the country with a kind of offshore drilling “constipation.” We need a good “laxative” to get things going again and the trio of drilling bills are the right medicine, Fleming said.
The Republicans are advancing their drilling legislation just one day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to outline an energy policy for the nation in a speech Wednesday.
The legislation was cheered by industry advocates. Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said the bills provide “a road map that industry, Congress and the administration can follow to increase jobs, decrease oil imports and increase energy reliability and sustainability.”
But Democrats noted that the Republican package focused squarely on oil and gas development, without legislative proposals to get rid of vulnerabilities revealed by last year’s oil spill.
“When the American people demanded a spill bill following the BP disaster, they weren’t thinking of legislation that would actually increase the chances of another spill occurring, as this legislation would do,” quipped Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the natural resources panel. “By offering these bills, it’s almost as if the Republicans are saying that the BP oil spill never happened, that 11 men never lost their lives, and that an independent commission was never created to subsequently not tell us about needed safety reforms.”
Hastings said his committee was waiting until more facts were known about the cause of the Deepwater Horizon disaster before advancing legislation that could stiffen oversight of offshore drilling and impose new mandates on the industry. At least three major panels are still investigating the oil spill.
People, you’re dreaming if you think passing this legislation will keep the price of oil and gas down for the present. Whether it’s in the interest of the Obama administration to let gasoline prices rise is a moot point. It is definitely in the interests of the oil companies to see prices rise, as long as they don’t rise to a price that will spur efforts for alternative energy. They can open up all the leases they like, but the oil companies will drill just enough to keep the price at the highest sustainable levels. Why wouldn’t they? It’s business. That’s how they make money.
AP: “An Interior Department report to be released Tuesday says more than two-thirds of offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle.
According to the report, obtained by The Associated Press, those inactive swaths of the Gulf could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The report also shows that 45 percent of all onshore oil and gas leases are inactive.”
There is no way to drill enough oil from the USA to lower the price of oil. I don’t care what the showboaters in Congress insinuate. It will take years to get any new oil to market. During those years, demand will continue to grow so by the time the oil arrives there will be no net gain. The only answer to our oil issues is to use less and find as many ways to replace it as possible. Settle down. I am not saying don’t drill, I am saying that demand will continue to surge and as long as demand is there, price/cost will continue to rise. Mostly don’t count on, by our standards, cheap oil, plan on paying more.
Obama and his army of radical enviromentalists want fossil fuel completely elimated, but if we want to be free from the stranglehold of OPEC, we have to get our offshore drilling going again.
The republicans need to state in these bills that all the oil will remain in the US for US consumption. Anything else is just a giveaway to the oil companies. Opec Has reaised their production and the price continued to rise. The republicans should design legislation to stop speculating of oil and natural gas, which would ease the Price fixing.
MrProgressive, oil companies spend more time worrying about their stock price than the price of oil. Old adage in the oil patch, “If your not growing, your shrinking.” There is no standing still. If you don’t keep adding reserves, your stock price goes down and you risk becoming a buy out target.
MrP…and they have to reinvest most of it in order to find more of it. And the higher the cost, the more it’s taxed, which you benefit with. They don’t drill “just enough” to keep prices up…that’s a lame disproved argum,ent. You can read…don’t be dishonest in order to push your hatred of big oil.
Another main reason….85 percent of the country’s coastal waters are off limits to drilling.
Drill baby Drill! People must don’t realize that drilling for oil is not like taking a shovel out into your backyard. It is a very complex endeavor. Plus, you run the risk of drilling a dry hole. So, the company loses thousands of dollars in the process. Gas will stay high because Oil and Gas is a business.
U.S. annual crude oil production:
2009: 1.95 billion barrels
2010: 2.01 billion barrels
2011: 2.15 billion barrels (estimate)
Under President Bush, annual U.S. crude oil production declined from 2.11 billion barrels in 2001 to 1.811 billion barrels in 2008. Now under Obama crude oil production is rising and is expected to continue to rise for several years. 2011 production is expected to surpass the peak production under President Bush (which occurred during the first year of his presidency, followed by relentless declines over his next 7 years)
I just cite these facts for people who are actually interested in facts.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
More repub bs. This is nothing but patting their oil buddies on the back and it’s about the money.
Domestic production will NOT decrease the price of gas. Time to move forward with alternative energies.
Here’s a novel idea…..let’s open up all drilling INSIDE the U.S. and not just offshore. It would seem that where there is onshore drilling, the likelyhood of any repeat disaster is minimized, the cost of a drilling lease would be less, the cost to transfer oil for refining would be less, and oh yeah, with opening up ANWAR, the caribou would adapt. You take the cost savings of that type of drilling (You’re lying if you say it costs more)and put that money towards alternative fuels technology, give tax breaks to companies who produce the alternative fuels (or get rid of the IRS altogether) and get the United States of the breast of the middle east oil!!!!!! Then we wouldn’t have to go to war in places like Iraq and Libya!!! But I guess I am living in fantasy land….
Drilling is a great idea … but what we really need to do is build more refineries because we already have more oil coming in than we as a country can refine. Making more supplies of oil will not help unless it can be turned into usable product in a timely manner!
I heard from a geologist in Canada that there is several hundred years of oil just waiting for us to come get off the coast of California. He said there’s so much oil there that Cali’s debt could be paid off within two-three MONTHS. In other words, 60 to 90 days for the granola bar eating tree huggers that are so against drilling in those waters.
Some one speak up if he’s wrong.
MrProgressive, oil companies do not make their money off the sale of gasoline. It is the sale of OIL where the revenue is genereated. It isn’t the oil companies who set the price of oil. It is speculators on Wallstreet. And you are ignorant if you don’t think the Chevrons, Shell, and Exxons of the world aren’t developing alternative energy technology. The super majors are energy companies and will go where the money is at.
Trail Trash, that report is way off base. An average block offshore in federal waters is about 5,000 acres. It doesn’t mean that ALL 5,000 acres has oil and gas flowing beneath it. Sometimes a reservoir may cover only a few hundred acres max….but that doesn’t stop the ID from claiming all 5,000 acres from their calculations. If you go look at the report yourself, you will notice that most of the leases do not have approved development plans. IE, the government has not allowed for development of about 18 million acres or 4,251 blocks.
Drilling is good for the economy. It creates good paying jobs to people with just a HS diploma. It also secures more of our resources and helps ween us off foreign oil. Open the Atlantic and allow more permits in the GOM!
Oilman, just quoting what AP was breaking. Rep. Markey has already jumped all over it in his effort to slander the oil industry.