With the price of gasoline at or approaching $4 per gallon, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement last month that private companies would be allowed to conduct seismic mapping surveys of the Atlantic continental shelf for the first time in three decades was widely hailed as a “significant first step” toward the goal of increasing domestic oil and gas production. But in fact, it was one step forward after several steps back. Had Salazar not canceled previously scheduled drilling leases off the Commonwealth’s coast last year, Virginia would already be the first state on the East Coast to tap its estimated 130 million barrels of oil and 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Permission to map — but not to drill — is an election-year ploy designed to make it appear as though President Obama is doing something about high gas prices. What he really has done is delay drilling off the Virginia coast for at least five more years — and possibly even longer.
Just before Salazar’s announcement in Norfolk, a Pew Research Center poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans now favor increased offshore drilling, up from 44 percent following the 2010 BP oil spill. Updated mapping of the continental shelf would have been well underway by now had the Obama administration not previously prevented the leases. And allowing seismic mapping now will not change the fact that there are currently no arrangements for any Atlantic coast leases in the administration’s five-year plan.
“This is an opportunity to move forward from a bad decision,” Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said in a statement, adding that “this small step forward follows many previous steps back.” McDonnell, whose stated goal is to make Virginia the energy capital of the East Coast, noted that the offshore drilling moratorium has already cost his state thousands of new jobs and a significant amount of new revenue for state and local governments.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing stringent new regulations, which, if adopted, could raise the cost of gasoline between 6 and 25 cents a gallon by the end of the year, without any proven environmental benefits. Unlike this seismic mapping bone that Obama is throwing Virginians, these regulations would have an immediate, real-world effect on gas prices. Obama, who won Virginia in 2008, is hoping voters are listening to what he says and not watching what his administration actually does to keep gas prices high.
