New drilling has been prohibited in much of US coastal waters since the 1980s, largely in response to the devastating 1969 spill off Santa Barbara. Congress let the ban lapse in late 2008 as high gas prices became a hot political issue.
Yet the spill has changed the game. The administration has suspended plans to open up new areas of US water to oil drilling. The plans envisaged opening up new areas of the Eastern coast of the United States for offshore oil drilling. Not every one though was contended with the move, underlining it was far from enough. Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University was of the opinion the original plan overlooked other areas that have greater potential to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, including the northeast coast and the West Coast.
Now courtesy the spill, even the proponents of drilling are shying away from supporting the offshore drilling initiative. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have lined up against drilling off their states' coastlines. In the aftermath of the spill, Gov. Schwarzenegger, who earlier suggested expanding offshore drilling, apparently to help close the state's $20 billion budget deficit, preferred withdrawing his support. He had little political room.
Schwarzenegger's surprise decision to pull support for a proposal to expand oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara County has effectively killed any short-term prospects for the project. And the chances of reviving the proposal may not improve even after Schwarzenegger leaves office next year. Both the leading gubernatorial candidates - Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown - oppose the project.
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who championed offshore oil drilling in Alaska, has also turned her back, now bashing "foreign" companies as the culprits behind the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the meantime, calls for a moratorium on offshore drilling are gathering pace on Capitol Hill too. In a rapid legislative response to the Gulf Coast spill, lawmakers are seeking to reinstitute a ban on new drilling off the West Coast and fast-track legislation to raise oil company liability for spills. No fewer than five congressional committees are gearing up for investigative hearings.
"Enough is enough," Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek) declared in a letter to House colleagues seeking support for a bill to permanently ban new energy exploration off California, Oregon and Washington state.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, expressed support for a permanent ban on new drilling off the California coast.
Legislation also has been introduced to prevent new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska until the cause of the rig blowout is known.
And then a coalition of some of the most influential environmental groups - the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council - have launched an 11th-hour challenge to halt the next frontier in offshore drilling in the Arctic.
Shell Inc. paid $2.1 billion for its Chukchi lease in 2008 and planned to drill three exploration wells this summer, up to 72 miles offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, a region of turbulent waters, heavy fog and shifting ice hundreds of miles from deep-water ports. It is a remote region where cleanup crews may be hampered by bone-chilling cold, 24-hour-a-day darkness, 20-foot waves, clouds too low to launch aircraft and waters too shallow to bring in large ships. The nearest Coast Guard base is nearly 1,000 miles away. It is indeed not every body's game! The influential group of three has now appealed the US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to suspend the drilling plan at least until a cause can be determined for the disastrous blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. They warned that the challenges of coping with an oil rig blowout in remote Arctic waters "would far surpass those related to BP's Deepwater Horizon explosion."
Before the gulf disaster, the Obama administration had said the Shell exploratory drilling would be allowed to proceed to "help develop critical information about this frontier area." The Arctic is believed to hold the world's largest untapped gas reserves and is a critical component of the strategy to lower America's dependence on foreign energy supplies. Though Shell drilled a limited number of exploration wells in the region in the 1980s and 1990s, the new leasing program was expected to launch the first wide-ranging move into Arctic waters, which US officials believe could hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico incident has given opponents yet more ammunition to attack the industry, Total Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie conceded in the immediate aftermath of the spill. And that is a real issue. New frontiers are coming under attack at a time when the global energy mix needs incremental sources from all directions. Every one concedes Saudi Arabia and the oil rich Gulf cannot meet all the energy needs of the world.
However, resources do not appear to be the real problem. There seem to be enough beneath the surface to meet the global requirements. Yet tapping those resources, accessing them and delivering to the consumers' remain an immediate issue - a real task - of far greater consequence.
Human ingenuity needs to be at work - rather overtime!
