New Offshore Oil Drilling Put On Hold

by Deacon Blues

The new administration is paying dividends elsewhere, as newly-confirmed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that the Obama administration would place a 180-day freeze on Bush's attempt to end-run the states and give offshore drilling rights to Big Oil.

President Obama is shelving a plan announced in the final days of the Bush administration to open much of the U.S. coast to oil drilling, including 130 million acres off California's coast from Mendocino to San Diego.

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the plan be put on hold while his agency conducts a 180-day review of the country's offshore oil and gas resources. Salazar's critical comments about the plan signaled that the new administration will seek to rewrite it if not completely scrap it.

After the previous administration was found to have done cocaine and had sex with industry representatives in the ultimate pimping of our government, the Obama administration will take a step back from the previous administration's racketeering to actually talk to the affected states first, instead of f*cking them over.

The Bush proposal "opened the possibility of oil and gas leases along the entire Eastern seaboard, portions of offshore California and the far eastern Gulf of Mexico with almost no consultation from states, industry or community input," Salazar said at a news conference in Washington. "In my view it was a headlong rush of the worst kind."

He said his agency will hold four public meetings over the next few months - one in Alaska, one on the West Coast, one along the East Coast and one near the Gulf Coast - to hear from governors, local officials, industry groups and environmentalists about the plan.

This move today signals that we may have an open debate in this country about our energy policy, and not restrict such discussions to behind closed doors in the White House with Big Oil, as Dick Cheney did.