Obama Expands Arctic Drilling, Crosses Fingers in Lieu of Spill Response Plan

[wtmusic]

"Yesterday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the Obama Administration’s highly anticipated plan for proposed offshore oil and gas leases from 2012-2017. It focuses on exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and giving oil companies the chance to bid on drilling rights in Arctic waters, including the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the Cook Inlet.

Because the plan targets areas with known potential for oil and gas development where exploration is currently active, the administration is ruling out drilling along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts — including an area near Virginia that had been slated for exploration prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

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“With the nearest Coast Guard station over 1,000 miles away and with few proven techniques for oil spill cleanup in extreme Arctic conditions, a spill in the Beaufort or Chukchi seas could devastate the entire region. “If a major spill were to occur in Arctic waters, cleanup crews would have to spend, on average, three to five days of each week simply standing by, watching helplessly as the blowout or spill continued to foul fragile Arctic ecosystems,” said World Wildlife Federation program director Rob Powell.”

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/09/364739/obama-arctic-offshore-drilling/

[Autumn]

1. Yeah cause we all know the Gulf just hasn't

been damaged enough. K/R Fools all of them.

[Beavker]

2. and a moron know it all I sit next to at work just got done

ranting about how Obama isn't doing anything. He was referring to the XL Pipeline and it's inaction, and how it he going out of his way to NOT create jobs. Then he makes some quote of a tax figure that is being left on the table because he isn't drilling off the coasts.

First, the guy doesn't realize that destroying our planet for a couple needed tax dollars (likely not seen on American Soil anyway after the loopholes are used) and a handful of jobs creating a ticking environmental time bomb (destroying our water supply) isn't worth it.

Yet, the Senate kills bill after bill and he says nothing. He's an opinionated relic anyway.