WASHINGTON--The Obama administration is planning to propose
opening up new areas of the nation's federally owned waters to oil
and natural gas drilling, including areas along the Atlantic Coast,
according to people familiar with the plan.
The Interior Department is set to propose as soon as Tuesday its
plan that will outline what leases the federal government will
offer from 2017 to 2022, a step the government is required by law
to take every five years.
The plan is expected to come under increased scrutiny as low oil
prices are testing the profit margins of energy companies and
President Barack Obama is pursuing an aggressive climate-change
agenda.
Jessica Kershaw, an Interior Department spokeswoman, declined to
comment Monday evening on the proposal.
The plan is expected to include leases off states in the mid-
and south-Atlantic coasts, including Virginia and both South and
North Carolina, whose governors support offshore drilling. It isn't
expected to include offshore Florida, whose policy makers have
generally opposed such a move.
The plan is also expected to block parts of the Beaufort and
Chukchi seas off the coast of Alaska for future oil and gas
development, according to Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen Lisa
Murkowski (R., Alaska).
On Sunday, Mr. Obama announced in a video message that the
Interior Department was designating as wilderness more than 12
million acres of Alaska's more than 19-million acre Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, including 1.5 million acres of coastal plains
thought to have rich oil and gas resources.
That move drew cheers from environmental groups, who are
expected to criticize Interior Department's proposal to offer lease
sales on the Atlantic Coast, which has no current drilling
activity.
"The best way to fight climate change is to leave these
resources in the ground," said Sierra Weaver, a lawyer at the
Southern Environmental Law Center, which opposes offshore drilling,
on Monday. "And the Atlantic Coast has incredible potential for
offshore wind."
The government's plan, which must go through a public comment
period before becoming final, represents a sort of middle ground
between what the oil and natural-gas industry wanted and what
environmentalists have called for. The final plan could be narrower
than its proposal, though not more expansive.
In its last five-year plan initially issued in March 2010, the
administration proposed opening up at least one area off Virginia's
coast to drilling. In the wake of the BP oil spill that wore on for
most of that summer, the administration reversed course and
canceled that lease sale.
The American Petroleum Institute, a Washington-based trade
group, had lobbied for the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, which is under a
congressional drilling ban until 2022, to be included as well in
case Congress repeals the ban before then. The plan isn't expected
to include this, but additional sales in the Western and Central
parts of the Gulf are expected.
"We want this to be the first step of a dialogue in terms of
making sure we're not taking anything off the table," said Erik
Milito, director of upstream and industry operations at API,
criticizing the department's expected move to not include the
Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
Write to Amy Harder at amy.harder@wsj.com
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