CoastLine: Oil and Gas Development off the North Carolina Coast
Waters along the eastern seaboard from Virginia to Georgia are included in a draft plan released by the Obama Administration at the end of last month. If the area is not, at some point, excluded from the proposal, lease sales could happen by 2021. Almost as soon Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced the draft plan that will set the boundaries for oil and gas drilling and development until 2022, opponents of drilling and critics of the proposal began lining up.
Environmentalists say the risks of seismic testing, drilling, and oil spills pose an unacceptable threat. Advocates for the oil and gas industry complain the proposed map is inadequate—keeping the Pacific, large swaths of Alaskan waters, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico closed to drilling.
Listen to America’s Energy Forum National Spokesperson, Algenon Cash, explain the benefits of offshore energy production in the Atlantic OCS.
