Interior Department Acts to Limit Scope of Impact in Petition for Rehearing of Court's Vacation of Five-Year OCS Leasing Program; Republicans Are Impatient

摘要

On 5/11/09 House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings and Reps. Bill Cassidy, Don Young, John Fleming, Louie Gohmert, Rob Bishop, Doug Lamborn, Steve Scalise and Jason Chaffetz sent an impatient letter to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that was highly critical of the Administration's "inaction" on the recent court decision that vacated the 2007-2012 offshore oil and natural gas leasing plan. "We have yet to hear from the Department of the Interior about this significant decision," the Republicans told Salazar. "We strongly urge the Department of Interior to immediately defend and restore the plan for the development of American oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The Department has at its disposal more than 1600 pages of environmental documents used to develop the OCS plan to complete the analysis requested by the Court."