Drilling For Oil and Gas at the Mouth of the Chesapeake

The Obama administration is sending signals that it might slow or stop the Bush era rush to allow oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic coast

This is good news.  Drilling  near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay would open the door to a host of environmental concerns, including catastrophic oil spills.

And there is also the bigger picture to think about. “Drill, baby, drill!” as a national energy policy will never wean the U.S. off of its dependence on inherently limited fossil fuels that cause air pollution and global warming. Nor will the amount of oil  or gas that may be present off of Virginia’s coast provide much short or long-term relief from energy prices.

The Washington Post reports this morning that new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the Bush administration’s approach to drilling "a headlong rush of the worst kind" and "a process tilted toward the usual energy players."

Last year, the Bush administration lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling. And the House and Senate decided not to renew a Congressional prohibition on offshore drilling that had been in place for more than 20 years.

In November, The Post reported that the Bush administration was moving ahead with efforts to lease the waters off Virginia’s coast. The federal government opened a public comment period on whether offshore acreage should be leased for exploration and drilling, which would be followed by an environmental review and decision.

Today, the newspaper said the Obama administration intends to rework the Bush plan for exploring for oil and gas from 3 to 200 miles from the U.S. coast. Interior Secretary Salazar said he would extend the public comment period and made general statements about “restoring order to a broken process” that was biased toward the drilling companies. But it’s still unclear exactly what that will mean for drilling off the Chesapeake Bay. 

Opening up that area to drilling would be a roll of the dice that Bay Daily doesn’t want to take.

Your thoughts? 

To drill, or not to drill... that is the question.

Comments

[alternative energy]

Hello,
While Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne insisted the proposal "adheres to the highest environmental standards" and could meet the nation's need for natural gas for a decade, conservationists warned of a potential environmental catastrophe...