The Trump Administration has offered to open more than 90 percent of the federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for consideration of future exploration and development. The proposal is in stark contrast to the current lease sale program that puts 94 percent of the shelf off limits.
“The important thing is we strike the right balance to protect our coasts and people while still powering America and achieving American Energy Dominance,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said upon announcing the plan.
The OCS is thought to contain billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that could potentially enhance U.S. energy security. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) latest estimates from 2016 show a mean of 89.87 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and a mean of 327.49 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas in the federal OCS.
The question is, how much new offshore drilling can realistically happen? And how much would this help to boost the American energy dominance?
While the world and the U.S. will continue to increase their demand for oil, the finalization of the new offshore lease sale plan is probably two years away, and drilling in new lease areas is even further down the road. It’s hard enough to predict where oil prices will be five months from now, let alone five years from now, in order to gauge how much interest there will be in half a decade.
As it stands, almost every east and west coastal state is against the new plan, and objections in the comment periods are looming. So are lawsuits. Opposing states may refuse to issue infrastructure authorizations, because states control the first three miles of shallow waters, and only after that does federal jurisdiction begin.
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