WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed opening upnearly all of America’s offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, but theindustry says it is mainly interested in one part of it, now cordoned offby the Pentagon: the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The industry’s focus on an area located near a sprawling network ofexisting platforms, pipes and ports could ease the path to new reserves,and assuage the drilling opponents near other places offered under theInterior Department’s proposed drilling plan issued last week, likeCalifornia’s Pacific, the Atlantic and Arctic.
But accessing it would likely require the consent of the U.S. military. Theeastern Gulf has been formally off-limits to drilling since 2006 due mainlyto the Defense Department’s concerns oil development would interfere withextensive military testing and training exercises in the area.
“The eastern Gulf of Mexico could be very attractive to industry because ofthe proximity to existing infrastructure in the central and western Gulf ofMexico,” the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents theoffshore oil and gas industry, said in a statement.
“Investing in the eastern Gulf could yield results – new jobs, new oil andgas production and increased energy security – quicker than investing inother offshore areas.”
The American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Associationof America have also expressed an interest in the eastern Gulf on behalf ofits members, and big driller Royal Dutch Shell Plc told Reuters in Octoberthat “we have appetite and we are interested” in the eastern Gulf.
Trump’s Interior Department has set up an “interagency working group” withthe Defense Department to negotiate the issue, according to a DefenseDepartment letter seen by Reuters.
In the letter, sent by Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan toInterior Secretary Ryan Zinke in September, Shanahan says the Pentagon“supports the development of national domestic energy resources in concertwith enabling military operations, training and testing.”
Defense Department spokeswoman Major Carla Gleason said collaboration withInterior on the issue was “a priority.”
Major offshore producers such as Exxon Mobil Corp, BP Plc, AnadarkoPetroleum Corp and ConocoPhillips declined to comment.
Shell welcomed the expanded offshore prospects the Trump administrationplans to make available, but has not committed to any new activity, saidspokesman Curtis Smith.
A Chevron spokeswoman, Veronica Flores-Paniagua, said the company is happywith Trump’s move and wants to continue to explore parts of Gulf, and alsoto better understand the geology of the Atlantic Seaboard.