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OCS Oil
and Gas Strategy
On March 31, 2010, the President and the Secretary announced the
Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Strategy as part of President
Obama’s comprehensive energy plan for the country. The Department
is pursuing a balanced, science-based strategy for exploring and
developing oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf.
The strategy will guide the current 2007-2012 offshore oil and gas
leasing program, which is being revised under the Court’s order that
one facet of the section 18 analysis was flawed, as well as the new
2012-2017 program that will supersede the 2010-2015 Draft Proposed
Program (DPP) issued by the prior Administration.
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Preparation of the New OCS Oil
and Gas Leasing Program
As part of the
March 31 strategy, MMS published a
Notice of Intent to
Prepare an EIS listing the OCS areas to be scoped for inclusion in the 5-year EIS. These areas are the Mid- and South Atlantic; Western, Central, and a portion of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico; and the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, and Cook Inlet, Alaska. Scoping meetings were to be held in June 2010 in conjunction with the comment period that closed on June 30, 2010. However, on June 30, in light of the efforts being undertaken in response to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon incident, the Department announced that scoping meetings have been postponed until later in 2010. While this decision is not a final determination of the areas to be considered for leasing in the final 5-year schedule of proposed lease sales, any areas not analyzed in the new EIS cannot be later considered for leasing in the 2012-2017 program.
On August 1, 2008,
MMS initiated the 5-year program preparation process with
publication of a
Request for Information (RFI) on a program
to cover the 2010-2015 time period, two years earlier than the usual
cycle. On January 16, 2009, MMS announced the release of the
Draft Proposed Program (DPP), the first of three
program proposals under section 18 of the OCS Lands Act.
On February 10, 2009, Secretary Salazar extended the comment period on the DPP to September 21, 2009, and he conducted
4 regional meetings in April to provide additional opportunities for input by all stakeholders. MMS received over 534,000 comments.
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