President Obama on Thursday dashed hopes for offshore drilling off Virginia’s coast, prompting a restrained, delicately worded reaction from Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.
McDonnell, despite watching a central plank of his transportation funding plan implode, departed from his customary criticism of federal authority and the Obama administration.
The state’s chief executive said he does not agree with Obama’s outright scuttling of the planned lease sale for oil and gas exploration, but that he does “respect his decision, and the need for delay and investigation.”
“We were poised to be the first state on the Atlantic coast to drill. This is going to take obviously some time to sort out what happened, make the technological and regulatory fixes,” McDonnell said on WRVA’s “Ask the Governor” program in Richmond.
The president already had indefinitely delayed the sale, which was scheduled for 2012, after a BP oil rig explosion that opened up a massive oil spill off the Gulf Coast. In announcing he would cancel the drilling, Obama said the company will be required to pay “every dime” of damages from the disaster.
Environmentalists and some Virginia Democrats cheered the decision. The Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter said the disaster brought to light “just how mistaken it would be to drill off Virginia’s coast.” The Chesapeake Bay Foundation said the risks of drilling outweigh any potential benefits. Sen. Jim Webb and Rep. Jim Moran, both Democrats, said they agree with the cancellation.
The president also announced he would suspend energy exploration off the coast of Alaska, cancel another lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico and suspend drilling on 33 deepwater wells in the Gulf.
Virginia’s lease sale would have encompassed a 2.9 million-acre slice of ocean east of the mouth of the Chesapeake. The federal government estimated the area contained 1.14 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 130 million barrels of oil.
