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MMS releases draft OCS lease sale plan End-of-administration announcement also included final EIS for Cape Wind Energy project and start of PEIS for Atlantic exploration Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In a swansong announcement for the Bush administration, the U.S. Minerals Management Service announced a series of energy-related actions on Jan. 16. The package of actions included the publication of a proposed outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing program covering the years 2010 to 2015.
“A new era has arrived. … We will continue to be the nation’s leader in the development of oil and gas resources off our coast,” said MMS Director Randall Luthi. “… Our economy and our families are dependent on a reliable, secure and reasonably priced source of energy. … We will continue to depend on oil and gas as a major energy source for at least the next generation.”
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne had announced in July that MMS would be developing a new five-year oil and gas leasing program that would overlap with the current OCS leasing program’s timeframe of 2007 to 2012. The announcement came hard on the heels of President Bush lifting an executive ban on oil and gas leasing in many areas of the continental shelf.
“Last summer the president revised the executive order concerning the outer continental shelf and this unlocked the door to development of much of the OCS. Later the Congress opened that door completely by allowing the decades old moratorium to expire,” Luthi said.
150,000 comments Luthi said that after a request for information went out on Aug. 4 MMS received more than 150,000 comments on its proposed new leasing program.
“We have now analyzed those comments and we are basing our recommendations for a new five-year program upon those comments,” Luthi said.
The proposed program consists of 31 lease sales in 12 offshore areas. Those areas are located offshore Alaska and over much of the outer continental shelf off the U.S. East Coast, as well as some limited areas off the U.S. West Coast.
Offshore Alaska, the proposed program envisages lease sales in the Chukchi Sea in 2010 and 2014; the North Aleutian basin in 2011 and 2014; Cook Inlet in 2011 and 2015; and the Beaufort Sea in 2013 and 2015.
Some of the lease sale areas offshore the Lower 48 had previously been subject to the moratorium and MMS has not scheduled any sales in these areas before 2011. Much environmental work will need to be done before MMS can hold lease sales in these areas, Luthi said.
“In fact we’ve specifically asked for information about areas that may warrant exclusion due to sensitive resources or other conflicts,” Luthi said.
And one proposed lease area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is still subject to a moratorium that Congress enacted in 2006 — a lease sale there, proposed for 2013, would require Congressional action, Luthi said.
Luthi emphasized that the draft plan is not a final document and said that the proposed lease sales will provide a basis for collecting more information about areas when people have not explored for several decades. The proposed lease sale program is subject to a 60-day public comment period, starting on Jan. 21.
And MMS has asked for information relating to potential coastal buffer zones and about measures that might limit the amount of infrastructure required, Luthi said.
The introduction to the plan also says that “the secretary is not recommending that any particular areas be in or out of the eventual final program. Rather this DPP (draft proposed program) is designed to gather information, allowing the process to move forward in a way that will allow the next administration to design a program that meets the objectives of the nation.”
However, in anticipation of interest in exploration in new areas to be leased, MMS also intends to initiate a programmatic environmental impact statement for geological and geophysical work along the Atlantic coast, Luthi said.
Alternative energies In addition to oil and gas development, MMS is also promoting the development of alternative energy sources. And as part of its package of actions announced Jan. 16 the agency said that it had completed the final environmental impact statement for the Cape Wind Energy project, offshore Massachusetts.
However, Luthi expressed disappointment that the Office of Management and Budget had not yet approved the final rule that MMS had developed for the Outer Continental Shelf Alternative Energy Program. During fiscal year 2008 MMS provided $3.8 million in funding for federal environmental studies regarding offshore alternative energy development, he said.
But will the new Obama administration pick up a new offshore oil and gas leasing program that includes areas previously subject to a moratorium?
“It is what it is,” Luthi said. “By starting this new five-year program we give the new administration the option of actually starting two years earlier than they normally would.”
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