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5 de abril de 2010The U.S. oil and natural-gas industry cautiously applauded President Barack Obama’s proposal Wednesday to open up new offshore areas in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration.
The initiative could lead ultimately to increased domestic energy production. However, industry officials pointed out that Mr. Obama’s plan didn’t definitively promise new areas for drilling, but did place some areas off limits for seven years.
Still, the industry was heartened by the president’s rhetorical embrace of fossil fuels, which they viewed as a change from an earlier more dismissive stance.
“We see it as a positive step in the right direction,” said Jack Gerard, president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobby group. “You have to start somewhere.”
During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama came around to supporting expanded drilling as part of a broader energy package to reduce dependence on foreign oil. On Wednesday he took much the same stance, saying also that the plan would lift domestic production while protecting natural resources.
The federal government estimated there was between 7.5 billion and 40 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent in the areas under consideration for lease. That is about one to four years of U.S. consumption at current rates. Industry executives pointed out that there has been so little exploration with modern technology, especially in the Atlantic, that those figures are likely low.
But the executives cautioned that even if drilling in new areas gets a green light, it would take years to exploit the resources. They say the area being discussed for new drilling is far smaller than what was proposed in the final days of President George W. Bush’s administration and then rolled back in the first weeks of Mr. Obama’s term.
Outside of the Gulf of Mexico and small portions off the coasts of California and Alaska, offshore drilling has been banned for more than a generation. Federal moratoria, in response to a large oil spill off Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969, have prevented even the most basic operations, such as using sound waves to try and detect oil deposit deep underground.
But as opposition to offshore drilling cooled in recent years, the moratoria ended in 2008, and some state governments, such as Virginia and Florida, have explored the practice in the hopes of generating revenue and creating jobs.
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said he would consider adding shallow areas off the Atlantic seaboard from Delaware to mid-Florida as well as certain deepwater areas in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to coming federal lease sales. The final decision governing which areas would be offered for lease to oil companies will be included in the 2012-2017 lease plan, which is still being developed. Congressional action is required to open the eastern Gulf of Mexico due to a 2006 law putting the area off limits.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S.-based oil company, called the announcement “a meaningful, potential opening.”
Mr. Obama specifically canceled four lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, scheduled to occur before 2012, and said there would be no lease sales in Alaska’s Bristol Bay through 2017. He also said the Pacific Coast, northern Atlantic and most of Florida would remain off limits.
Marvin Odum, president of Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s U.S. operations, said he would have preferred the Alaska leases weren’t deferred. Shell is active in offshore exploration in Alaska and hopes to drill this year on current leases, which it said would not be affected by Mr. Obama’s announcement Wednesday. “We have plenty of work to do for a couple of years to execute our exploration program,” he said.
Without any specific assurances that new areas would be offered for lease in the upcoming five-year plan, industry officials said they were guarded but hopeful. “It could be positive and is certainly more positive than I was expecting,” said Randy Stilley, chief executive of Houston-based Seahawk Drilling Inc. “But I don’t know what to expect.”
Crude prices ended at a 17-month high Wednesday, fueled mainly by a weaker dollar and momentum from recent gains.
The Obama administration and the oil industry have had poor relations. Mr. Obama has proposed several billion dollars in new fees and taxes on fossil fuel production, which is still pending, while handing out grants and loan guarantees to develop competing renewable fuels. Wednesday, he offered support for both types of fuels.
“In order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, we are going to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up new sources of renewable home-grown energy,” he said.
The industry warned that it could take years from opening up off-limit areas until new supplies of energy reach markets. The earliest new drilling could be off the Virginia coast in 2013, about a year after a planned lease sale. And then it could take years to required build platforms and pipelines.
To make the point of how long such effort can take, Mr. Gerard, of the American Petroleum Institute, said: “If the Carter Administration had made the decision to open offshore areas, that energy would be in the pipeline today.”
