Here is Alaska we do not do Deep Water Drilling. All our drilling is in shallow water. When Ken Salazar lifted the Drilling Bann last week, that was only for the nm Gulf Coast. Story follows.
Collateral damage: Oil drilling is still banned in Alaska’s offshore water
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
The federal government’s offshore oil drilling program in the Arctic remains the victim of collateral damage from the Obama administration’s over-reaction to the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
When the administration lifted the moratorium on deepwater drilling Tuesday, it left the ban in place for waters off Alaska. This makes even less sense than it did to apply a ban to Alaska’s offshore waters in the first place.
Public officials across Alaska, from both major political parties, expressed disappointment in the administration’s decision.
Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan asked the U.S. District Court to issue an immediate order lifting the ban, amending the lawsuit the state of Alaska had filed earlier.
“It is a cruel irony for Alaska to have been improperly bootstrapped into a moratorium that stemmed from deepwater activities in the Gulf, and then have the Gulf moratorium lifted without similar relief for Alaska’s Arctic exploration activities, which occur in much shallower waters,” Sullivan said in a news release.
Sullivan appears to have a good legal case in addition to the good public policy case. Under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, governors in states affected by agency decisions of this sort are supposed to be given advance notice and a chance to offer input. That hasn’t happened, Sullivan said.
Sen. Mark Begich noted that offshore drilling in Alaska is good policy from an economic and environmental standpoint. “This country imports far too much of our oil and gas from abroad while we have the technology to safely develop these resources at home and put thousands of Americans to work,” he said in a news release. Begich said he wrote to the president a month ago asking for a timeline for the restoration of the leasing program.
Alaskans are hoping to hear the answer.
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