Interior Secretary blocks Bush "midnight action": sale of offshore oil, gas leases

[G_j]

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_Interior_Secretary_blocks_sale_o_02102009.html

US Interior Secretary blocks sale of offshore oil, gas leases

Published: Tuesday February 10, 2009


US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday moved to block a "midnight action" by the administration of George W. Bush, which tried to push through the sale of offshore exploration leases to oil and gas companies.

"On January 16, the last business day of the Bush administration, the administration proposed a new five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing," Salazar told a news conference.

In his second reversal in a week of a last-minute proposal pushed through by the Bush administration, Salazar announced that he was extending until September the period for public comment on the plan to develop the outer continental shelf, and taking other steps to block what he called "a midnight action."

The Bush administration had tried to move forward from 2012 to 2010 the creation of a new energy development plan that would affect some 300 million offshore acres on the outer continental shelf, from the US eastern seaboard to the Pacific Ocean off California, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

A quick-turnaround deadline of March 23 for public hearings into the project proposed by the previous administration took "almost no consideration of state, industry and community input," said Salazar.

He slammed the Bush administration for making "a headlong rush of the worst kind" with its 11th-hour proposal, which favored big oil and ignored the developers of renewable energy.

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[MiniMe]

1. I wasn't sure about Salazar as a choice, but I like what he has done so far

[EFerrari]

2. I've been afraid to be too happy about Salazar but

:woohoo:

[tilsammans]

3. Whew!

Yay! :applause:

[Bobbieo]

4. Salazar is saving the West from greedy Bushcos.