User:Tahirihp/sandbox

In May of 2008, a few months prior to Obama’s 2009 Presidential Inauguration, the USGS Energy Resource Program published a study titled “Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas of the Arctic Circle." They reported that there may be as much as 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in offshore areas of the Arctic, Identifying three high interest areas: the West Siberian Basin, the East Barents Basin, and off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi-Beaufort Sea. In 2008 alone American investors spent $2.6 billion to obtain leases on US government controlled offshore Alaskan tracts to begin the process of securing the oil.

High-profile events during the Obama presidency focused attention on the safety of deepwater oil drilling in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the U.S. The April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, operated by BP, and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred shortly after the Interior Department released a five-year plan for oil and gas development of the U.S. outer continental shelf (OCS). President Obama appointed a bipartisan committee to determine the causes of the blowout and to recommend policies to prevent future disasters. Just one month after the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in May of 2008 U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar imposed a 6 month moratorium on all permits to drill new deepwater wells. The purpose of the moratorium was to address both environmental and safety concerns. By October 2008 the moratorium was lifted but new rules were issued by DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement. One of the requirements set forth by the Bureau was that all offshore oil operators were required to submit new applications proving that they were in compliance with the new more stringent rules.