What’s next
The “Draft Proposed Program” announced Tuesday is just one of many steps in a long process toward the potential leasing of offshore areas for oil and gas exploration.
A lease of areas off the South Carolina coast is potentially scheduled in 2021.
Meanwhile, the Department of Interior will need to develop an Environmental Impact Statement, which will go through several drafts and review periods.
Governors, attorneys general, a wide range of stakeholders and members of Congress will provide input along the way.
The “Draft Proposed Program,” along with the “Notice of Intent to Develop a Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” will be available for public comment for 60 days after publication of the documents in the Federal Register.
For more information, including maps, go to www.boem.gov/Five-Year-Program
The Atlantic Coast has been off-limits for oil and natural gas drilling for more than three decades, but that could change under a plan proposed Tuesday by federal regulators.
The initial plan calls for leasing federal waters off South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia in 2021.
The petroleum industry celebrated the proposal, while complaining that it didn’t go far enough. Environmental groups warned of disaster.
“This represents a significant shift in federal policy and, in my view, a threat to the environment, the economy and the lifestyle of living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina,” said Chris DeScherer, a Charleston-based senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “It’s not just the coastal waters, wetlands, and wildlife that depend on them, but the businesses and the tourism industry.”
Erik Milito, director of Upstream and Industry Operations for the American Petroleum Institute, said offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling is much safer today than just five years ago.
“We are now in a new age,” Milito said in a conference call with reporters. “We’ve decreased the risk dramatically.”
Five years ago, the BP Deep Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. history, fouled the Gulf of Mexico. BP is now in court fighting a proposed federal civil penalty of $13.7 billion.
Milito said offshore exploration along the Atlantic Coast is needed to create jobs and promote U.S. energy independence. Governors and residents of coastal states support such exploration and eventually drilling, he said, citing polls commissioned by API.
A September 2013 Harris Interactive poll of 605 South Carolina residents found that 77 percent supported offshore oil and gas drilling while just 15 percent opposed it. Those polled were a roughly even mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents, the majority of whom were at least 50 years old.
South Carolina’s governor supports offshore drilling and both of the state’s U.S. senators have introduced legislation in support of oil exploration.
The federal “draft proposed plan” announced at noon Tuesday proposed restricting drilling in some areas off Alaska while opening the southern and mid-Atlantic Coast to such activity. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Abigail Hopper announced the proposals.
A 60-day public comment area will end March 28. Next comes a “proposed program” and another public comment period, and then a “proposed final program” and a period for congressional review.
Federal regulators and industry interests don’t really know what might be found off the Atlantic coast, because there’s been no exploration in more than 30 years.
The bureau has estimated 4.72 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 37.51 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas could lie beneath federal waters from Florida to Maine.
“This five-year plan could destroy our coastal economies for decades to come, costing future generations the fishing livelihoods that have been part of their local fabric for generations,” environmental group Oceana said. “Commercial fishing, tourism and recreation economies would suffer from routine oil leaks as well as the looming risk of a Deepwater Horizon-like oil disaster stretching along the East Coast.”
In July, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the controversial use of loud air blasts from underwater sonic guns to find oil and gas deposits off South Carolina. The BOEM approval allowed companies to pursue permits, signaling an end to a moratorium.
Potential drilling off the coast from Virginia to Georgia, could be years away, however.
“If they begin having lease sales in 2018 to 2020, five years after that you could see rigs drilling exploratory wells,” Milito said.
The federal draft proposal sees 2021 as the first lease date for the Atlantic coast.
DeScherer said that if oil and gas drilling begins off South Carolina, on-shore infrastructure would be needed as well.
“Where is the refinery going to go?” he said.
The plan is “a distraction to pursuing renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind, and directly threatens our coast,” said DeScherer.
In comments to The Post and Courier, Milito sought to allay concerns about any potential impact on South Carolina’s coastal quality of life and tourism industry.
“We would likely see the government put a buffer zone in place so that activity couldn’t take place within 10 miles or 20 miles — out of the sight line,” he said. “All of the equipment is on the floor of the ocean.”
The federal proposal, released after Milito’s comment, calls for a 50-mile buffer.
Milito said those with concerns should consider Louisiana, where “we’ve seen a great economy thrive with hunting, fishing and tourism.”
DeScherer also used the Gulf Coast as an example, but to make the opposite point.
“When you go to the Gulf Coast, you see tar balls on the beach,” he said.
Reach David Slade at 937-5552.
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