ConocoPhillips CEO calls White House offshore drilling plan a ‘good first step’

ConocoPhillips CEO Jim Mulva on Wednesday called White House plans to expand offshore oil-and-gas drilling a step forward but said even more areas should be opened up to development.

“It is a good first step and we think it is important to make more acreage available, we think it is important also to assess what ultimately could be made available off of the coasts,” the CEO of the country’s third-largest oil company told reporters.

Mulva spoke to reporters after addressing a meeting of the United States Energy Association in Washington, D.C.

“We are always looking for more availability of acreage so that we can develop our own indigenous supplies, to the extent that we do it helps us with energy security, it helps us with respect to investment and jobs and has a better impact with respect to the cost of energy,” he added.

While Mulva said the plan should be broader, he did not provide specifics about what other areas should be opened.

The White House plan would allow drilling off the coasts of mid-Atlantic and southeastern states, expanded exploration off the northern coast of Alaska, and shrink the no-drilling buffer off Florida’s coast the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

But it keeps the Pacific Coast off-limits and also blocks leasing in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

Mulva, in his remarks to the USEA meeting, touted the potential of natural gas to serve as a long-term global energy supply. The industry’s increasing ability to tap “unconventional” gas sources – such as gas trapped in U.S. shale rock formations – has boosted supplies.

Mulva said there is potential for centuries worth of supply worldwide. “This is nature’s gift to the people of the world,” he said. Gas emits far fewer greenhouse gases than oil and coal.

But Mulva broke somewhat with climate change advocates who see gas – which supplies about a fifth of U.S. electricity and is used to power buses and other vehicles too –  as a “bridge fuel” while more renewable energy sources come online.

“It is more than a bridge fuel. It is part of the long-term energy solution,” Mulva said. “We must overcome the opposition of the hydrocarbon deniers.”