Obama’s Offshore Oil Plan Forces Drillers to Focus on Gulf
- Five-year schedule of lease sales leaves out Arctic, Atlantic
- Environmentalists have pressed for permanent protections
on July 7, 2015 in Shishmaref, Alaska.
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The Obama administration’s decision to forgo auctions of new oil and gas drilling rights in U.S. Arctic waters deals a blow to energy companies seeking to lock up new territory beyond the long-explored Gulf of Mexico.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the move, announced Friday, strikes the right balance, by sustaining oil and gas development in the Gulf, while blocking new activity in remote and fragile Arctic waters that could be devastated by an oil spill.