Remember ? So who's pocket is he in ?
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.CLIMATE
Obama Proposes Oil And Gas Drilling Along East Coast
BY ARI PHILLIPS JAN 27, 2015 4:07PM
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
On Tuesday, the Obama administration released a proposal to sell offshore oil and gas leases in new areas of federally owned waters, including regions along the Atlantic Coast from Virginia to Georgia. The announcement is part of the Department of Interior’s latest five-year plan, which includes federal leases from 2017 to 2022.
Congressional bans on offshore drilling in the Atlantic ended in 2008 and Obama first pushed for Atlantic Coast leasing in 2010. Several weeks after announcing lease plans for south and mid-Atlantic drilling the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, and also blew up these plans.
Environmental groups see this revisiting of the plans as a case of “oil spill amnesia.” They argue that the technology or regulations have not advanced significantly in the five years since the Deepwater Horizon Spill, the fallout from which continues in economic recovery and prolonged legal battles over fines and compensation.
“The South-Atlantic has never been home to oil production,” Sierra B. Weaver, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, told ThinkProgress. “When exploratory drilling was proposed off of North Carolina in the 1980s, the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred and plans were shelved because we didn’t want that risk here. In 2010 after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, the Obama administration cancelled a lease sale off of Virginia because it was also too risky. That risk hasn’t changed.”
The proposal is a draft that could be significantly altered or narrowed after upcoming months of public hearings and input, however it does not require congressional approval. The entire draft includes 14 potential lease sales in eight different areas, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, but also three off the coast of Alaska and the portion along Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia.
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