Opening new onshore areas will create new jobs, produce more energy, and enhance federal revenue

摘要

Last month in Washington DC, I happily accepted the chairmanship of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), of which I have been a proud member for many years. NOIA is a unique and effective member-driven association which advocates on behalf of the entire offshore energy industry. The NOIA membership consists of all segments of the industry, including companies engaged in business activities ranging from producing to drilling, engineering to marine and air transport, offshore construction to equipment manufacture and supply, telecommunications to finance and insurance, and even renewable energy. Since NOIA focuses solely on the offshore energy industry, it is no surprise that the overarching issue driving the association's work is offshore access, or more to the point, the lack thereof. NOIA was established four decades ago, and congressional and administrative bans kept our industry from exploring about 85% of the outer continental shelf (OCS) for nearly three of those decades. Those bans were lifted in 2008, and their absence finally laid our nation's entire OCS on the table for oil and gas exploration and possible development, and handed the Secretary of the Interior a golden opportunity to include more offshore areas in the 2012-2017 OCS Oil and Gas Leasing Plan.