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US Green Agenda Delivered Blow as Ban on Drilling off Florida Overturned

Oil rigs extracting petroleum in the Los Angeles area of Culver City, California. The vote would put oil and gas rigs within 10 miles of the Florida panhandle, and within 45 miles of Tampa. (AFP/Getty Images/File/David McNew) A Senate committee delivered a rebuff to Barack Obama's clean energy agenda yesterday by voting to overturn a ban on oil and gas drilling off the Florida coast.

The 13-10 vote in the Senate's energy and natural resources committee to lift the drilling ban off Florida's coast runs counter to the push by the White House and Democrats in Congres

Posted in offshore drilling

Weighing in on Offshore Drilling

Protesters outside the Denaina Center, where Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is holding hearings on offshore drilling. (Kyle Hopkins/Anchorage Daily News)

Gov. Sarah Palin told the new secretary of Interior on Tuesday that Alaska needs new offshore oil and gas development or risks an early shutdown of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

"Once that line shuts down, it will mean the end of oil production on the North Slope," Palin said, adding that plans for a new pipeline to carry natural gas to Lower 48 markets are at stake, too.

Posted in Energy, Environment, gas, offshore drilling, oil

Activists Push for Offshore Energy Drilling Ban

With offshore oil platforms seen in the distance, a group of students from the Crane Country Day School surf team play in the water Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 in Santa Barbara, Calif. The State Lands Commission meets in Santa Barbara Thursday to vote on whether to lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling that has been in place for nearly 40 years. (AP Photo/Michael A. Mariant)

WASHINGTON - Environmental advocates urged Congress yesterday to reinstate the broad moratorium on offshore oil drilling, but a key congressman said on that issue, "The ship may have already sailed."

Representative Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the political reality is that the broad moratorium across 85 percent of the country's Outer Continental Shelf lifted by Congress last fall is unlikely to be reimposed.

Posted in Energy, Environment, offshore drilling

The Human Cost of Bush's Arctic Policy

Wainwright, Alaska - "We'll have to give you an Eskimo name if you like our food!" Kenneth "Kenny" Tagarook teased as he sliced another piece of frozen raw caribou meat for me with his ulu - a hand-sized, flat piece of metal with a small handle opposite the sharp, curved edge.

Kenny and his wife Ann are Inupiat ("In-OU-pe-at" or "Eskimo"). They are hosting me and Kenny's cousin Rosemary Ahtuangaruak during our visit in Wainwright. The village of 520 mostly Inupiat people lies along Alaska's North Slope over 200 miles above the Arctic Circle.

Posted in conservation, Energy, Environment, Human Rights, offshore drilling, oil

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 10, 2009
4:02 PM

CONTACT: Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Erin Allweiss, NRDC, 202-513-6254

Salazar Announcement Shows New Approach to Offshore Energy at Department of Interior

WASHINGTON - February 10 - Department of Interior Secretary Salazar announced today that he is going to take a thorough review of the five-year OCS oil and gas leasing program that was announced in the final days of the Bush administration.  

Following is a statement by Wesley Warren, director of programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council:  

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The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Links:
Posted in Energy, Environent, offshore drilling

Obama Has Opportunity to Reverse Mistake on Offshore Drilling

Campaigning in Florida last June as a presidential candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama blasted the proposal of his opponent, Senator John McCain, to open coastal areas of the United States to offshore drilling. Declaring that it "makes no sense at all," Obama correctly stated that such drilling would make very little difference in the price of gasoline, and supported a reduction of fossil fuel use through a stimulus program that would create "green jobs."

Posted in offshore drilling

Drillers Eye Oil Reserves off California Coast

Drillers eye oil reserves off California coast: The Jenner coast north of Bodega Bay is one of the spots along the California coast that has been studied for potential oil and gas exploration. (Brian L Frank / The Chronicle)

SAN FRANCISCO - The federal government is taking steps that may open California's fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts, and raises the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay.

Posted in drilling, offshore drilling, oil

Drill, Virginia, Drill

The debate about offshore oil exploration has landed nearly in Maryland's backyard.  The Department of Interior today took the first step towards allowing drilling in the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast - just a little more than 50 miles from Maryland's shore. 

Posted in Environment, offshore drilling
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