Snail’s pace approach endangers America’s energy resurgence

There’s something for everyone to criticize in the Obama administration’s latest offshore energy plan. The leave-it-in-the-ground crowd fumes over the Interior Department’s move to consider oil and natural gas exploration in the Atlantic. Others, like me, are disappointed that the narrowly crafted Atlantic policy represents the bare minimum while leaving promising areas in the Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico off limits. But keeping all sides equally frustrated is not what we mean by “all-of-the-above” energy — a strategy the White House claims to support. The United States needs multiple sources of energy to meet our needs and to remain a world energy leader, and that includes expanding offshore oil and natural gas. A full 87 percent of federally-controlled offshore acreage is entirely off limits to production, and the administration’s proposed five-year leasing plan does almost nothing to change that. In the plan, the Interior Department proposes holding only one Atlantic lease sale and not until 2021. Even that could be “narrowed or taken out entirely in the future,” according to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Failing to open more areas now could set us back decades. Offshore oil and natural gas development is a long-term investment. A decade or more can elapse between a lease sale and the first barrel of commercial production...more