At his recent press conference at a Shell station in Mankato, we heard Congressman Walz talk about the need to expedite exploration, drilling, and production of gas and oil in offshore areas and public lands that are already open and leased. Those areas should be tapped--along with other open areas not yet leased--before Congress lifts moratoria on other offshore areas. Walz called upon the president to "jawbone" oil companies to do more to extract oil and natural gas in leased areas.
Thus, yesterday's report from the U.S. Geological Services, Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle [pdf format] comes as welcome news for those who want to encourage drilling in areas that are currently open.
That's because there is no drilling moratorium now covering any of Alaska's offshore areas that are at or above the Arctic Circle. Period.That's what we took away from looking at a map of the Alaska Coast [pdf] issued by the Department of Minerals Management Service and this map at CNN.
Just in case we were reading the document incorrectly (some news articles about the USGS report claimed that Alaskan waters were off limits), we called the public information office for the Alaska OCS Region of the MMS. Robin Cacy, a thoroughly professional spokesperson for the regional office, confirmed that none of Alaska's offshore water were off-limits because of either Congressional or executive edicts, although some areas had not been included in the current five-year leasing plan.
Since Alaska's arctic waters are open for potential leasing, we laughed out loud at this passage in the most recent Brian Davis attack release that a kind friend forwarded to us:
" . . . [I] am very encouraged by yesterday's report from the U.S. Geological Survey that estimates there may be up to 90 billion barrels of oil in the arctic that are in unexplored areas, mostly offshore."
Davis continued, "Congress should let the moratoria on offshore drilling expire on September 30 as scheduled and not renew it. We are the only major industrialized country in the world that has the majority of offshore areas off-limits to oil exploration." . . .
Nice try, but the truth is that the American share of those 90 billions barrels are in waters where there is no ban on drilling (whether it will be economical to extract them awaits another report). News stories peg the American share of the resources at one-third, or 30 billion barrels.
We do see some faint progress on Dr. Davis's relation to the facts in his latest press release. While he told MPR a couple of days ago that:
"We are the only country in the world that does not allow off-shore drilling, and yet we're the largest consumer of oil and the third largest producer," he says
now he is able to recognize that some areas are indeed open for drilling (the MMS says that they contain all but 18 billion barrels of oil out of 80 billion barrels). Perhaps he simply didn't understand that Alaska's arctic waters are open.
Who knows? Maybe Davis will be someday learn to look beyond the headlines, read government reports, check out the map, and call a government agency to double check the information. After all, it only took five years and exposure in the national and local media for him to figure out he has to go back to a work related automatic payment system that would make sure his property taxes got in on time.
That's a steep learning curve. And since the facts once more might get in the congressional candidate's NRCC sock puppet talking points, we're not holding our breath.
Image: Yes, sea monster, NRCC sock puppets are pretty alarming. Would they be less so if they could read a map?
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