Administration acts on oil leases

The Obama administration acted on two fronts Thursday to prove it is committed to domestic oil and natural gas development, announcing plans to extend leases affected by last year's ban on deep-water exploration and to sell drilling rights in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska this year. The government is formally allowing oil and gas companies to seek one-year extensions for any nonproducing leases in at least 500 feet of water that expire before Dec. 31, 2015. Roughly 1,535 leases would qualify for the extra time. The move, which was announced earlier, responds to complaints from Gulf Coast officials and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill who say the five-month moratorium on most deep-water exploration unfairly punished oil and gas companies with no connection to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Also Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar expanded on President Barack Obama's May 14 pledge to conduct annual sales for tracts inside the 23-million-acre reserve on Alaska's North Slope...more