Bills, Baby, Bills

Frustrated by the Obama administration’s slow pace in restarting offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon accident last year, Republicans in Congress are proposing a range of bills to force the administration to accelerate the granting of drilling permits and open new offshore areas to oil and gas exploration.

The new drilling measures are part of a concerted Republican effort to undercut or reverse the administration’s energy and environmental policies. Republicans in the Senate and House are moving on bills to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate climate-altering gases and are using pending budget measures to limit enforcement of a variety of other environmental laws.

President Obama will answer some of their arguments in a speech on national energy policy scheduled for Wednesday. He is expected to say that the administration is encouraging development of energy from both conventional and alternative sources, but with appropriate safety and environmental protections. The president will also promote government programs to increase the fuel efficiency of commercial vehicle fleets at a United Parcel Service depot in Landover, Md., on Friday.

Representative Doc Hastings, the Washington Republican who heads the House Natural Resources Committee, introduced three measures on Tuesday that would rewrite the rules governing offshore drilling now in effect to force the administration to move more quickly on applications for new wells off the coasts.

One bill would open vast areas of the gulf and the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans that are now off-limits to oil development. Another would set a 30-day time limit for the interior secretary to act on applications for new wells. A third would require the Interior Department to hold lease sales in the Gulf and off the coast of Virginia in 2011, sales that were halted by the administration while it undertook an extensive review of safety and environmental conditions under which drilling would be allowed.

“These bills will directly reverse Obama administration actions that have locked up America’s vast offshore oil and natural gas resources,” Mr. Hastings said in a statement. “The bills will end the de facto moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico and allow people to return to work, require lease sales to be held that were canceled or delayed by the Obama administration, and lift the Obama administration’s ban on new offshore drilling by directing production to occur in areas with the most oil and natural gas resources.”

“In contrast to the president’s ‘drill nowhere new’ plan,” he said “this is a ‘drill smart’ plan.”

“With thousands unemployed in the gulf region and gasoline prices nearing $4 per gallon,” Mr. Hastings continued, “swift action must be taken to reverse course and increase U.S. energy production.”
He said that he and other Republicans would soon be introducing other energy bills to encourage faster development of onshore oil drilling, coal, renewable energy and hydroelectric power.

Siimilar measures are expected to be filed in the Senate later this week. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, criticized President Obama in a floor speech on Tuesday, saying that the president’s policies had shut off the flow of domestic oil and driven up gasoline prices. He said that E.P.A. plans to regulate carbon dioxide emissions would further increase energy costs and eliminate thousands of jobs.

He also excoriated the president for praising Brazil’s offshore oil industry, saying that the United States would be an eager customer for that country’s resources even as he closed off millions of acres of domestic lands and waters to oil and gas development.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Mr. McConnell said.

The administration imposed a moratorium on most deepwater drilling activities in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill, which killed 11 rig workers and loosed nearly five million barrels of oil in the gulf. The Interior Department wrote new safety and environmental rules for offshore drilling and officially lifted the moratorium in October.

The department has now issued seven permits for activities that were halted under the suspension, with another 12 deepwater permits pending. An additional 24 permit applications have been returned to applicants for more information.

The Interior Department has also approved 39 permits for new wells in shallow water; 11 are pending.

On Tuesday the Interior Department issued a paper saying that more than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico and more than half of onshore leases on federal lands are unused, despite complaints by oil companies that they are being denied access to public lands and waters.

“We continue to support safe and responsible domestic energy production, and as this report shows millions of acres that have already been leased to industry for oil and gas productions sit idle,” Ken Salazar, the Secretary of Interior, said. “These are resources that belong to the American people, and they expect those supplies to be developed in a timely and responsible manner and with a fair return to taxpayers.”

“As we continue to offer new areas onshore and offshore for leasing, as we have done over the last two years, we will also be exploring ways to provide incentives to companies to bring production online quickly and safely,” he said.

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres under lease are inactive, including almost 24 million leased acres in the Gulf of Mexico, which could hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The review also found that about 57 percent of all leased acres onshore are inactive, totaling nearly 22 million acres.