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RFI out for new 5-year OCS plan
President Donald Trump said June 29 at an Energy Week event that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke was opening public comment for a new five-year leasing program for the Outer Continental Shelf. The current 2017-22 five-year program will continue to be executed until the new 2019-24 program is complete.
The Department of the Interior said in a statement that this is the first step in implementing the president’s April 28 executive order on American Energy.
A request for information for the new plan was published in the Federal Register July 3, beginning a 45-day public comment period, which closes Aug. 17.
“Developing a new National Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing Program that respects environmental and economic sensitivities but still allows us to responsibly develop our resources is critical to reaching President Trump’s goal of energy dominance,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in a June 29 statement.
Zinke said 94 percent of the OCS was “off limits to responsible development” under the Obama administration.
“Per statute and consistent with previous efforts, BOEM will evaluate all 26 of the OCS planning areas during this first stage and is, therefore, requesting comments on all areas,” Interior said.
A first step “This first step does not propose to schedule sales in particular areas, or make any preliminary decisions on what areas will be included in the schedule,” BOEM Acting Director Walter Cruikshank said in the June 29 statement. “The RFI considers all areas of the Outer Continental Shelf and provides an opportunity for interested parties to submit comments and suggestions about the potential for leasing and to identify environmental and other concerns and uses that may be affected by offshore leasing.”
The current 2017-22 five-year plan scheduled 11 potential sales, 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Cook Inlet. In late November, following the general election, the Obama administration’s Department of the Interior removed the Alaska Arctic from the 2017-22 five-year OCS oil and gas lease sale and in mid-December President Obama, by executive order, withdrew parts of the northern Bering Sea from future oil and gas leasing. At the end of 2016, in another executive order, Obama designated “the vast majority of U.S. waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas as indefinitely off limits to offshore oil and gas leasing” with similar action for a portion of the Atlantic Ocean.
U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Alaska Republicans, introduced legislation to roll back the OCS drilling restrictions made in the final weeks of the Obama administration, although the two said in an April statement that they believed the Trump administration could revoke the Obama withdrawals using executive authority.
Murkowski said June 29 that she welcomed the Trump administration’s move toward a new five-year plan.
“I’m pleased the administration has wasted no time in starting the process for a new and better plan that could increase offshore development in Alaska and elsewhere,” the senator said.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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