No more offshore drilling under Obama

Obama's Offshore Drilling Policies

The six-month delay the Obama administration put on approving offshore drilling leases in federal waters looks set to become a three-year ban as Obama's confusing policies on coastal drilling finally appear to have come to a conclusion - no more drilling off US shores under Obama.

Despite over 60 percent of the America people supporting the expansion of oil and gas drilling in Federal waters, according to a Rasmussen Poll conducted at the end of the last year, the Obama administration first term will not see the approval of any new leases.

The main reason American people seem to be behind the expansion of drilling is because they feel significant investments in such infrastructure will help to drive down oil and gas prices through opening up the estimated 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in untapped reserves.

The decision has left Americans, possible even Democrats, pining for the Bush administration. President Bush's policies on drilling anywhere was never in question. In 2008 he lifted an executive ban on Outer Continental Shelf leasing. In the same year with a bipartisan agreement, Congress lifted another longstanding ban on new oil and gas leasing in the OCS.

Anger among the Republicans

But Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has given the clearest indication yet that this administration does not share the same views on drilling as the previous administration, because the drilling resulting from the lifted bans in 2008 was supposed to start in July and now Salazar said he intends to discard the 2010-2015 lease plan developed by the Bush administration in favor of a new plan that won't even go into effect until 2012, as reported by the Washington Examiner.

This has obviously generated anger among the Republican camp where, the longer the delays in approving drilling leases went on, the more they became concerned that they would be blocked permanently.

"Secretary Salazar has finally confirmed what had long been feared - that the Obama Administration has no intention of opening up new areas for offshore drilling during his four-years in office," said Rep. Doc Hastings, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.

The jobs the drilling would have created are now lost. In states such as Louisiana, where thousands of jobs would have been generated from some offshore drilling leases, people have been left disillusioned by Obama's decision. This is on top of the fact that while billions of dollars more are spent on foreign oil, billions of dollars worth of domestic energy resources will remain unused.

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Washingto to announce coastal drilling plans | Offshore drilling still high on the agenda | Will change in political landscape make carbon tax inevitable?

Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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