WASHINGTON New Jersey lawmakers in both parties are objecting to a Bush administration proposal that would promote offshore drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of southern Virginia.
"Tourism is an incredibly valuable economic engine for our state, and much of that industry is dependent on clean beaches and oceans," 10 New Jersey congressmen and two U.S. senators from New Jersey wrote in a letter to President Bush on Friday.
The bipartisan group alleged that the U.S. Interior Department's plan for drilling east of Virginia "ignored the proposal's potential impacts on New Jersey's environment."
U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Monday announced his agency's strategy for increasing oil and natural gas production from the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.
But Kempthorne's plan also would authorize exploration for oil and natural gas in one mid-Atlantic region a 3-million acre region shaped like a wedge and situated 50 miles east of southern Virginia if the president were to approve a lease of the site and if Congress were to nix an existing moratorium on offshore drilling that covers the Atlantic seaboard.
The Interior Department's approach could produce 10 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over 40 years, generating almost $170 billion in tax royalties, Kempthorne said in a statement Monday.
In appropriating funds for Interior Department programs, members of Congress have blocked offshore drilling along the Atlantic coastline every year for the past 25 years.
Additionally, President Clinton signed into law a ban that should prevent oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic seaboard through 2012.Source : www.nj.com
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