Marine Log - November 2008 - (Page 20)

INSIDEWASHINGTON Drilling ban quietly fades away n the end, the long-standing Congressional moratorium on drilling in most U.S. coastal waters just died quietly. President Bush signed into law one of those humungous, allembracing “continuing resolutions” that, just for once, did not embrace a continuation of the ban. The National Ocean Industries (NOIA) said it was “pleased that these rigid prohibitions have now been removed.” “Now, as a nation, we are free to engage in an actual policy debate over where it is and is not appropriate to explore for and produce oil and natural gas from our offshore reservoirs,” said NOIA President Tom Fry. “There is already an extensive public process to I solicit input from companies, individuals, state leaders and environmental organizations. This debate will now be that much more robust since 85% of the lower 48’s OCS is no longer simply closed off from consideration." It may be a little early, though, for those of us in the “Drill, Baby, Drill” brigade to start celebrating. Opponents of offshore drilling have made it clear that they will use every legal avenue open to them to make it hard for actual drilling to get under way. That could mean, for example, that the only person drilling offshore Florida could be Fidel Castro. NIMBY reactions aside, there are couple of other factors at play. One of these is the availability of drilling equipment. At the moment, it is tight. Which brings us to the second factor—the price of oil. At press time it was around $65 a barrel and OPEC had just announced a production cut back of 1.5 million barrels a day to try to prevent a slide to an even lower level. According to some estimates for deepwater drilling to be viable, the price of oil needs to be above about $70 a barrel. Uncertainty about oil prices will do nothing to encourage offshore drilling in U.S. waters, whatever new acreage is opened up for leasing. Before the drilling ban just quietly withered away, Congress had several pieces of energy legislation in the works. Essentially, despite some of the containing some sensible proposals, they all just got killed by pre-election partisan bickering and sloganeering. With the election out of the way, the new Administration needs to craft a sensible energy policy as a matter of some urgency. Extended possibilities for environmentally-responsible offshore drilling should be a part of any such policy. With the election out of the way, it should be possible to decide on where in U.S. waters offshore drilling makes sense. If Congress and the new Administration can reach such an agreement, a sensible energy policy will put constraints on NIMBY opportunities to tie things up in the courts. 20 MARINE LOG NOVEMBER 2008 www.marinelog.com http://www.turtleskin.com/ http://www.turtleskin.com/ http://www.marinelog.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Marine Log - November 2008

Marine Log - November 2008 Contents Editorial Second Thoughts Update Inside Washington Looking Back at 130 Years Generation NeXt What's Ahead? Media Kit 2009 Defying the Naysayers Rampant Piracy Takes Shipping Hostage The Last Chapter of the New Carissa International Workboat Show Preview Newsmakers Tech News Contracts Events Website Directory ML Buyer's Guide ML Marketplace Marine Salvage

Marine Log - November 2008

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