Offshore drilling years away, says oil industry
Even if Congress lifts the ban on new offshore oil drilling tomorrow, actual drilling is a long time coming, says this story in the Courier-Post.
It cites experts who say that even if Congress lifts the ban, companies may not choose to drill at all — if they don’t think there are enough oil and gas deposits off the coast of the New Jersey to justify the huge upfront costs involved in building platforms and pipelines, for example.
But the expert mentioned next works for the oil companies: Andy Radford, a policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute.
“We have to walk before we can run in this case. We don’t want to give people the sense that this is going to happen overnight,” Radford said. “(In) the Atlantic, we pretty much have to start from scratch… We haven’t been out there in over 20 years.”
The Washington, D.C.-based API, a trade association/lobbying arm for the big oil companies, has funded research that tries to cast doubt on global warming and its causes and supports the lifting of the offshore drilling ban.
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