The Department of the Interior has scheduled a media briefing for this afternoon. We expect that Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) planning areas to be taken off the table for the 2012-2017 Five Year Plan. Recall a few facts:

• On July 14, 2008, in response to public outcry regarding $147 per barrel oil prices and the need for increased domestic supply, President Bush lifted the executive moratorium that prohibited oil and natural gas production off of the Atlantic and Pacific OCS.
• On October 1, 2008, again in response to public outcry, Congress lifted the overlapping congressional moratorium that prohibited oil and natural gas production off of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
• On March 31, 2010, (pre-Deepwater Horizon) the Obama Administration canceled five lease sales previously scheduled in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Alaska, as well as the North Aleutian Basin. Moreover, the North Aleutian Basin was put under express moratorium by presidential order. In addition, the Obama Administration made clear that  it would not consider even scoping the Pacific coast in its 2012-2017 plan. However, the Obama Administration did a fine media blitz job by graciously promising to at least scope out including the Eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic coasts in its 2012-2017 plan.

Despite 2008’s public outcry (sound like health care?), today’s announcement is expected to close off scoping for even the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic OCS. 

One has to wonder why the Obama Administration has declared war on domestic energy production on federal lands. No other country in the world took the moratorium course this administration did after Deepwater Horizon. And no other country has the de facto moratorium that this country currently has in place.

The year before the Obama Administration took over, bonus bids from the OCS totaled $10 billion. In FY 2009, bonus bids were approximately $1 billion. If the Obama Administration really wanted to start correcting the budget deficit, and really wanted private sector jobs, it would stop canceling lease sales.  Indeed, because of the protracted environmental process the Interior Department has put in place for developing its Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, we are not expecting another lease sale (even in the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico) until 2012 at the earliest.

Because the Five Year Plan sets the country’s course until 2017, it will be hard to reverse the direction this Administration has set the country on.

RPC Analyst Maryam Sabbaghian Brown