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If Interior Department can't stop off-shore energy, NOAA has a backup plan
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
11/01/09 3:47 PM EST
Urban zoning in cities and suburbs divides land up into bite-size parcels and typically makes their use and development dependent upon securing approval from multiple levels of planning bureaucrats in government. But imagine if government tried to apply the same nghtmarish process to the ocean floor.
Sound outlandish? Don't bet on it. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator Jane Lubchenco is working with the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on just such a plan, according to WhatAboutAlaska.com. The plan would seek to impose on 1.76 bilion acres of the American Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) the same sort of block-by-block bureaucratic controls that environmentalists and others have used for years to stifle development on land.
Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is clearly slow-walking his department's proposed five-year plan for developing the immense oil and natural gas resources under the OCS. So the NOAA/CEQ initiative might be seen as the backup plan for preventing off-shore drilling should the five-year plan somehow fail to throw sufficient obstacles to development.
The CEQ is headed by Obama appointee Nancy Sutley, a former Clinton administration appointee under EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who is now director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.
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