NYT: Bush Offshore Drilling Plan Widens Rifts Over Energy Policy

[DeepModem Mom]

Offshore Drilling Plan Widens Rifts Over Energy Policy
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: April 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 8 — A Bush administration proposal to open an energy-rich tract of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling has touched off a tough fight in Congress, the latest demonstration of the political barriers to providing new energy supplies even at a time of high demand and record prices.

The two-million-acre area, in deep waters 100 miles south of Pensacola, Fla., is estimated to contain nearly half a billion barrels of oil and three trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to run roughly a million vehicles and heat more than half a million homes for about 15 years. The site, Area 181, is the only major offshore leasing zone that the administration is offering for development.

But lawmakers are divided over competing proposals to expand or to limit the drilling. The Senate Energy Committee and its chairman, Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, are pushing for a wider drilling zone, while the two Florida senators and many from the state's delegation in the House are arguing for a smaller tract. Other lawmakers oppose any new drilling at all.

The debate could go a long way toward defining how the nation satisfies its need for new energy and whether longstanding prohibitions against drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, the deep waters well beyond state coastlines, will end.

The fight, meanwhile, threatens to hold up the confirmation of President Bush's choice to lead the Interior Department, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho. Mr. Kempthorne was nominated last month to replace Gale A. Norton, a strong proponent of the plan, who stepped down March 31. Like Ms. Norton, Mr. Kempthorne, a former senator, is a determined advocate of developing new supplies of energy through drilling....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/washington/09drill.html

[Boomer]

1. Soon to be a moot point

If -- as is increasingly suspected -- global warming is responsible for the increasing number and ferocity of hurricanes, then Gulf oil deposits will be practically impossible to exploit. There simply won't be enough time to build new (and extremely expensive) oil rigs before they're destroyed.

As it is, we'll be lucky to keep the ones we've got through the end of this coming hurricane season.

[truthisfreedom]

2. you got it. and you know big oil is thinking hard about this problem...