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White House continues deepwater drilling ban, delays Alaska project
The White House will continue a ban on new deepwater oil-and-gas
drilling permits for six months and will also delay drilling in
shallower Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast, administration officials
said.
President Barack Obama plans to announce tougher offshore
safety oversight at a news conference Thursday. The administration is
also canceling a planned lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico and
another off Virginia’s coast.
They also represent a major political victory for environmentalists and some Democrats who have called for pulling back on new leasing and drilling in the wake of the BP spill.
The upcoming White House announcement comes amid press reports of encouraging signs that BP's effort to cap the ongoing leak that began Wednesday are proceeding effectively. The company is pumping heavy drilling muds into the damaged well to try and block the flow.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, however, told a House committee Thursday that "whether it will work or not is still unknown."
“It is a dynamic process,” he said at a House Appropriations Committee hearing.
Obama is continuing the ban on deepwater wells announced last month for another half-year while a bipartisan independent commission he recently established probes the Gulf spill and needed safety and regulatory improvements.
Planned drilling in shallower waters off Alaska’s coast will also be delayed pending the commission review, a White House aide said. However, other shallow-water permits will now be able to proceed with new safety conditions, another official said.
Obama’s comments Thursday will follow his receipt of a more accelerated, 30-day Interior Department safety review that Obama ordered last month.
“The president will discuss the conclusions of the 30-day safety review on offshore drilling he directed Secretary Salazar to conduct,” an administration official said.
“He will announce standards to strengthen oversight of the industry and enhance safety, a first step in a process that the independent Presidential Commission will continue,” the official added.
Salazar declined to
discuss the specifics of the upcoming White House announcement. But he
broadly
cited a need to improve offshore practices.
“We need to make sure that if there is going to be deepwater drilling in the outer continental shelf that it is going to be done safely,” Salazar said.
The decisions appear to mean that Shell Oil will be unable to begin planned exploratory drilling this summer in shallow waters off Alaska’s northern coast.
The decision is a defeat for Shell, which has sought to reassure regulators that its plans could proceed safely.
The company, in a letter to Interior Department regulators this month, touted blowout prevention safeguards and said it has “unprecedented” response plans in the event of any spills.
Environmentalists and liberal Democrats had renewed efforts to block the Alaska drilling after the Gulf of Mexico spill, alleging it will imperil sensitive whales and other species.
But Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who supports offshore development, bashed the decision to delay the Alaska drilling.
“I am frustrated that this decision by the Obama administration to halt offshore development for a year will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation’s energy needs,” he said in a prepared statement.
The Obama administration had already suspended planning for a lease sale that was slated for tracts 50 miles off Virginia’s coast in the 2011-2012 timeframe. Now that sale is canceled entirely “due to environmental concerns and concerns raised by the Defense Department,” the White House official said.
Democrats from Maryland and New Jersey have pressed for the sale’s cancellation.
This story was posted at 8:45 a.m. and updated at 10: 42 a.m.
