A model for future leasing, now that the OCS moratorium has expired:

From the Minerals Management Service:

NEW ORLEANS - The Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) has proposed that oil and gas Lease Sale 208 for the Central Gulf of Mexico Planning Area be held March 18, 2009. The Notice of Availability of the Proposed Notice of Sale (PNOS) was published in the Federal Register on Friday, October 3.

The proposed sale encompasses approximately 6,200 unleased blocks covering more than 33.5 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This area includes 5.8 million acres, known as the 181 South Area, that will be offered for lease for the first time since 1988. “What makes Sale 208 noteworthy is the addition of the 181 South Area,” said MMS director Randall Luthi. “The states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas will share in all revenue from leases in this new area.”

The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 mandated that the 181 South Area, approximately 5.8 million acres located in the southeastern part of the Central Planning Area, be offered for lease, and that the four Gulf producing states share in the revenues. 

According to MMS estimates, the proposed lease sale could result in production of approximately 0.807 to 1.336 billion barrels of oil and 3.365 to 5.405 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But…

Two steps forward, six steps back, six steps back:

The darkening economic outlook may force lawmakers to delay some public policy priorities, but two House Democrats indicated Tuesday that curbing global warming won’t be one of them.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Energy and Air Quality subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) released a 461-page bill that seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 80 percent over the next four decades. Environmental groups welcomed that target, but criticized the bill, which Dingell and Boucher refer to as a “discussion draft,” for delaying dramatic emissions reductions until after 2020.

Tar sands, perhaps. That would be good.

Politico’s The Crypt blog has a report on the Democratic conference call yesterday, where energy was a major item of discussion.

Democratic leaders in the House discussed the possibility on Wednesday of offering a comprehensive energy package when Congress returns in the fall, according to leadership aides.

Details remain hazy from the Wednesday afternoon conference call, and one aide cautioned that “no final decision [was] made.”

But it seems clear party leaders are crafting a comprehensive energy package that would combine a Republican priority to open new offshore sites for oil and gas exploration with Democratic priorities, like tax subsidies for renewable sources of energy or new requirements for energy producers to generate more power from renewables, like wind and solar power.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell commented in anticipation of the call:

What we really need to have is a real debate like we used to have in the Senate where lots of different amendments were offered and you had a chance to offer whatever you thought would make a difference,” McConnell said.

Skepticism seems warranted, just as a matter of political reality. The absolutists among the environmental constituencies will not accept any additional OCS drilling under any circumstance, and so a “compromise” that met their standards would have to be political cover and nothing more. Even if some pro-consumer, pro-energy, pro-market bill passes like the progressively bipartisan Peterson-Abercrombie legislation, H.R. 6709, you don’t think the environmentalist left will immediately turn to the courts to block drilling? It’s what they do.

The Washington Post assesses three of the arguments used by opponents of OCS oil and natural gas drilling in a good editorial today, “Snake Oil.” We especially appreciate the rebuttal to “use it or lose it,” the specious argument that oil companies are just sitting on vast lands for drilling and refusing to develop them because…well, there the argument falls short. The Post’s explanation is clear and persuasive:

The oil companies aren’t using the leases they already have. According to the MMS, there were 7,457 active leases as of June 8. Of those, only 1,877 were classified as “producing.” As we pointed out in a previous editorial, the five leases that have made up the Shell Perdido project off Galveston since 1996 are not classified as producing. Only when it starts pumping the equivalent of an estimated 130,000 barrels of oil a day at the end of the decade will it be deemed “active.” Since 1996, Shell has paid rent on the leases; filed and had approved numerous reports with the MMS, including an environmentally sensitive resource development plan and an oil spill recovery plan that is subject to unannounced practice runs by the MMS; drilled several wells to explore the area at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; and started constructing the necessary infrastructure to bring the oil to market. The notion that oil companies are just sitting on oil leases is a myth. With oil prices still above $100 a barrel, that charge never made sense.

The Post does bow to the anti-energy shibboleth, ANWR, although it doesn’t really state an argument: “We agree that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with its varied and sensitive ecosystems, should be preserved. In the quest for new sources of energy, there are trade-offs. That pristine area must remain off-limits.” We hope the member of the editorial board who elicited that concession appreciates it.

Elsewhere…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on CNN’s Larry King: “So there are things that Congress can do and we have voted on this over and over again. But the Republicans and the president have resisted. Instead, they have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas. Well, we can do that. We can have a vote on that. But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them.” Some see in those comments a softening in the Speaker’s until-now resolute opposition to offshore drilling of any sort. That would be great. But we see a flexibile definition of “hoax” that could be called on to prevent action. 

As for “immediate relief,” an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily points to a report by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. From “Don’t Ask, Don’t Drill“:

The Minerals Management Service estimates there are 10 billion barrels waiting off the California coast.

“California could actually start producing new oil within a year,” the Bernstein report said, because the oil is in shallow water, and drilling platforms have been there since before the moratoria.

Immediate enough?