The Obama administration is reversing course and planning to withdraw a planned oil and natural gas lease sale off the southeast Atlantic coast, a move that will prompt cheers from coastal communities and environmental groups but criticism from oil companies and some state leaders.
In the Interior Department’s latest proposed offshore leasing blueprint, expected to be released Tuesday, the government will remove the one lease sale it had last year initially planned to offer in 2021 in the waters between Virginia and Georgia, according to an Interior Department official.
The move is part of a broader push by President Barack Obama to pursue an ambitious climate-change legacy, which also includes the first-ever federal rules limiting carbon emissions on power plants and a host of other environmental regulations clamping down on pollution from the oil, natural gas and coal industries.
The Interior Department’s blueprint, required by law every five years, governs offshore leasing for oil and natural gas drilling in federal waters between 2017 and 2022, including the Arctic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The plan isn’t yet final, and it may not be done before Mr. Obama leaves office, leaving the final touches—or, potentially, a sweeping rewrite or even the plan’s complete withdrawal—to the next president.
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have opposed offshore drilling, especially along the Atlantic Coast, while Republican candidates for president, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, support increasing all drilling, including offshore.
The Interior Department estimates that there are almost 3.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil off the Atlantic Coast and more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, though energy industry officials say there could be much more. The U.S. consumes nearly 20 million barrels of petroleum products a day and nearly 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
By: Amy Harder (WSJ).
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