High energy prices may help lift US offshore ban

15 April 2008 22:58  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--Record prices for oil and rising costs for natural gas may help amend or even end the 26-year-old congressional ban on offshore drilling along the US East and West Coasts, a leading House member said on Tuesday.

 

Representative John Peterson (Republican-Pennsylvania) said through a spokesman that he hopes his reintroduction of an offshore drilling bill will help stimulate debate in Congress about making use of vast US domestic natural gas reserves amid record-high energy costs.

 

Petersen is seeking to add his offshore drilling measure, the National Environment and Energy Development (NEED) Act, as an amendment to the Beach Protection Act being debated on the House floor this week.

 

The NEED Act bill, HR-2784, would open most of the 85% of US outer continental shelf (OCS) regions that have been closed to energy drilling by successive congressional moratoria since 1982. Those areas of the 200-mile wide US outer shelf regions lie chiefly off the US East and West Coasts and along Alaska’s long shoreline.

 

Peterson’s bill has 167 cosponsors in the House. He said he is confident it would pass if brought to a House floor vote and accused the Democrat majority in the House of blocking the bill.

 

Jordan Clark, Peterson’s chief of staff, said the NEED Act provisions likely will be stripped out of the beach bill.

 

He said that even though this week’s effort to attach the OCS drilling measure to the broader bill is likely to fail, Peterson also plans to press the matter later this year when the Interior Department appropriations bill - which contains the offshore drilling ban - is considered.

  

($1 = €0.63)

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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