US Interior Secy says open to new offshore drilling

[struggle4progress]

Source: Reuters

Wed Jan 28, 2009 9:01pm GMT
By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday the Obama administration was open to oil drilling in new offshore areas as part of a comprehensive plan to overhaul U.S. energy policy.

But he would not specify which tracts could be opened to energy exploration ...

"There are places where it is appropriate to explore and to develop oil and gas resources, and there are places that are not appropriate," Salazar said.

Earlier, during a briefing at the department, Salazar told reporters he thought the Gulf of Mexico would be a good place to allow more drilling ...


Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2853346020090...

[MadHound]

1. Oh boy, let's drill baby drill

More change we can believe in eh

[polichick]

2. That's INSANE!

[midnight]

3. I'm not sure that drilling will bring in the production needed to

sustain use until several years down the road? And in that time we could have solar and wind plants up and running so this doesn't sound ecomomical, or ecological?

[bluestateguy]

4. Only off of red states

They should have to deal with the environmental consequences of the inevitable "accidents" that will come.

[4lbs]

6. Precisely. Red states want offshore oil drilling, let them have it, off their own shores.

n/t

[David Zephyr]

5. My first post at the DU in over a month: Ken Salazar is no ally of the environment.

In one of my last posts before I took a leave of absence from the DU for the last month I posted the following about then newly-appointed Ken Salazar:

"Obama's Secretary of Interior? Ken Salazar, a man in the pocket of the mining industry and the agricorps and who was a cheerleader for the corrupt Gayle Norton at Interior."

Today's "news" should only surprise phony progressives who should known better and who should have kept their pompoms at rest.

Ken Salazar is a disgraceful choice to head the Interior.

This is simply disgusting and should make any true progressive sick.

Referenced OP: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... .

[MasonJar]

9. This is Obama's call; perhaps his not being a friend to the environment

is why Salazaar was chosen. If not so, then why?

[sofa king]

7. You know what? I'd probably say the same thing.

It takes, what, like fifteen years to get a well up and running, right? If you could open the spigot on every potential well on the seaboard tomorrow, it wouldn't make a dent in America's demand, nor would it significantly lower the price of oil worldwide.

But saying you're okay with the idea gets a lot of greedy a-holes off of your back and moves them onto mutually interesting issues, like how any well is going to be built without banks to lend money to build it, or a shipping industry to move the parts, or skilled laborers to build it, or affordable health care for those laborers.

And while the greedy a-holes are busy planning to plunder the last of America's strategic hydrocarbon reserve, the rest of America will be moving right past 'em, toward a day when oil isn't any less expensive (or more profitable) than renewable energy sources, and toward a day when at least some of that energy supply is out of the hands of those greedy a-holes.

So I say screw 'em. Let 'em play their silly little games, and then watch 'em try to hawk poisonous tar to Americans who consume less than half the energy they consume today, and want to know where that energy comes from before they buy it.

[MasonJar]

8. Obama loses me again.

[NYC_SKP]

10. You never say never, you leave your options open.

What you do is wait it out, the word "appropriate" in Salazar's statement means everything because the Obama administration now controls the definition of that word in the context of offshore drilling.

Nothing to fear here.

.

[closeupready]

11. When oil is now hovering around $40/bl., why on Earth do we need to drill off

our own shores???? (Obviously, I mean drill on new sites)